Primed to win share in Games medal pool

Jan Cameron put on her Mother Hen hat yesterday and gathered her watery brood round her.

"We are going to make an impact this time," she said as New Zealand's swim squad presented themselves to a large gathering at New Zealand House in downtown Melbourne.

Head coach Cameron was referring to the Manchester Games four years ago, when New Zealand's haul was a meagre one silver and one bronze.

"The pool is not a stranger," Cameron said, referring to time spent at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. "People make fast times, not the water, and we're ready to go bust."

If Cameron had heard former Olympic champion Duncan Armstrong's tip on what Australia's women might do in the pool, she wasn't letting on.

If she had, she'd certainly have had a retort.

On the eve of the Games - opening at the Melbourne Cricket Ground tonight - and amid a flurry of outlandish predictions on how the Australians would run up a cricket score in the medal stakes, Armstrong claimed Australia would win all 19 women's gold medals in the pool for an unprecedented Games clean sweep.

"[Head coach] Alan Thompson was quoted as saying he thinks, 'We've got a chance to win 15 out of the 19'. I sort of look at it and go, 'Where are we going to drop the four of them?"' Armstrong said.

He might have been speaking on behalf of most Australian sportspeople, who fully expect the hosts to push a giant green and gold broom through these Games, sweeping up gold dust all over the city.

Bets can be placed on all events at the Games. You can get $11 on Australia winning more than 120 gold medals (they won 82 in Manchester but home soil means a golden crop, or so the call goes).

The short odds for an Australian medal haul of more than 240 is $3.75.

When Auckland backstroker Hannah McLean learned of Armstrong's call, she raised an eyebrow in an "Oh really" kind of way.

"I hadn't heard that," she said yesterday. "If they want to go into it that way, that's fine."

McLean is New Zealand's best chance to trip up the Australians, having finished fifth and seventh in the world championships 100m and 200m last year in Montreal.

Former double Olympian Danyon Loader flew in yesterday. He'd heard it all before and reckoned the biggest beneficiaries of such comments were the other teams, who gleaned substantial motivation of a "Stuff you, mate" variety.

Cameron exuded pride in her swimmers, at one point dropping into a school-teacherly "Are we ready team?" call in response to a question about whether they were perfectly primed to hit the water tomorrow.

There were a handful of absentees for various reasons, Cameron adding "and we've lost Duncan Laing".

Laing, Loader's old coach, is a legendary figure in New Zealand swimming. He is at his last big event and he is hard to lose.

"We think he got on the wrong bus," Cameron quipped. "Do you know where Duncan is, Danyon?"

To which his finest pupil, from the back of the room, could only shrug a bemused "Don't ask me" in reply.

There was no talk of specific medals, but there will be no room for excuses if New Zealand don't make their presence felt.

Cameron's swimmers must now justify her confidence.