Swimming: Paralympic star qualifies with ease

Northland Paralympic star Cameron Leslie has qualified for this year's world championships in Canada after easily making the qualifying time in his specialist 150m individual medley race.

Leslie, who won gold in the event at the London and Beijing paralympics and is the world record holder with a time of 2.25:98, qualified at the New Zealand Open Swimming Championships at the West Auckland Aquatic centre last month.

His time of 2.43:10 easily beat the three-minute qualifying time for the International Paralympic Committee World Long Course Swimming Championships in Montreal in August.

While the time was 18 seconds below his world best mark, Leslie is happy with his training and confident of doing well at the biennial world champs.

The Paralympics is the pinnacle of the sport, which is where all athletes gear their training towards.

"The time was pretty average, but, at this stage, it's all about doing the qualifying time, rather than posting a super quick time," he says.

"The beauty of being the top dog and world record holder is that they set the qualifying standard around your time, so it makes life a bit easier when planning your training programmes."

Now it's all about keeping his fitness levels up and losing a few kilograms ahead of the world championships and, from next month, he will be spending two days in Auckland every week with his coach and training partner.

Leslie knows he can, and will, swim faster for the world champs, but doesn't think his world best time will be under threat by anybody at the meet.

"Judging by recent history my opposition's times won't be that much faster as we are all building up to peak at the next Paralympics [in Brazil in 2016], where everybody goes and swims faster."