Swimming: Rio Olympic dream afloat

Kane Radford will go in as favourite at the Legend of the Lake feature race in Rotorua on Sunday. Photo / Ben Fraser

Local swimmer Kane Radford knows it's "do or die time" over the next couple of months as he looks to qualify for the Rio Olympics.

Radford, 25, will be competing in his hometown of Rotorua on Sunday when the New Zealand Ocean Swim Series bring an event to Tikitapu (Blue Lake).

It is the first time the popular series has held a stop in the city with about 1000 swimmers expected to take part in the Legend of the Lake event at Blue Lake.

Radford, who is based in Perth, is currently back home in Rotorua and has decided to stick around to compete in the feature 3.5km race. He is also gearing up for his last chance to qualify for the Rio Olympics in the 10km open water swim event.

"Training has been going really good. We have changed a few things from the world champs [last July] to fix up some of the problems I had there," he said.

"We have to go to Portugal now in early June which is basically the last shot for everyone around the world to qualify for the Olympics, where we have to finish top nine."

Radford qualified for the London Olympics in 2012 but the New Zealand Olympic Committee decided not to send him to the Games. Radford has been training full-time during the past four years to make his Olympic dream a reality this time around. "The four-year cycle is finally up, it is do or die time now essentially."

Radford, who has won the New Zealand Ocean Swim Series five times, said it was great to see organiser Scott Rice bring an event to the city.

"I've been telling him to bring one here since he started - but to finally bring one here it is going to be great," Radford said.

"I can't see any reason why it can't become the biggest event of the series. They are already talking about how surprised they are with the number of people that are coming to it."

The huge field of swimmers will line-up across four distances at the Rotorua event including a 200m, 300m, 1km and 3.5km swim.

Radford said the 3.5km swim was quite short for him but he would be out to win it. "I will just be warming up by the time I have to finish, but it is always good to work on a bit of speed."

Radford sports quite a few tattoos across his body, and has left a spot for the Olympic rings on his latest tattoo of a ship.

"I left the top flag blank as that is where I'm hoping to put the Olympic rings in," he said. "I wanted to have a different spin on the Olympic tattoo than just the rings."

For full details and entry information on the Legend of the Lake go to www.oceanswim.co.nz. Events start from 10.20am on Sunday. Entries are available on the day if events haven't sold out.

- To help Kane Radford, who is self-funded, with his costs for travel and racing this season please go to www.gofundme.com/cbneztc4.