Paul Lewis: Pool of talent has plenty more to offer

The success of the New Zealand swimming team at the World Short-course Championships in Shanghai has passed largely without comment - but it might be the precursor to a golden age of swimming for this country.

No one should take the performance in Shanghai - a silver for Moss Burmester in the 200m butterfly, a bronze for Hannah McLean in the 200m backstroke and 22 (yes, 22) New Zealand records set - as a signal that New Zealand swimmers will scoop the pool in the Beijing Olympics of 2008.

For a start, there's a big difference between short-course and long-course swimming. The times in the latter are slower than in short-course as the pools are longer, there are fewer turns and less time spent underwater. The Olympics, of course, is a long-course event.

But it's still a damned good sign. The cynics might also suggest that the swimmers got their peaking right, too. There was some shaking of heads about performances at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games - McLean in particular was expected to do better - but the swim team met overall medal expectations, even though the cynics might suggest that they peaked at the right time for the more important meeting (Shanghai).

Personally, all that is missing from our swimmers is what might be called the Sieben factor. Australian Jon Sieben was the tiny (1.73m) butterfly swimmer who created arguably one of the biggest upsets in Olympic swimming history when he won the 200m fly in world-record time in Los Angeles in 1984. Few in world swimming knew much about Sieben and he was certainly regarded as no threat to the race favourite and world-record holder, Michael Gross of Germany.

Gross was called 'the albatross' - he stood 2m tall, with a 'wingspan' of 2.25m. He was lean but had a powerful, fluid butterfly stroke, propelled by his huge feet in the fly kick. He was the hot favourite with the only threat thought to be the USA's Pablo Morales. Sieben, in contrast, was known as 'Shrimp'.

I was at the McDonald's pool (the LA Olympics were the first to commercialise) to watch a young New Zealand butterflier by the name of Anthony Mosse, who finished a meritorious fifth, and was simply flabbergasted - as was everyone else - by what Sieben did.

A 17-year-old from Brisbane, Sieben was placed seventh at the 100m mark and the official records say he was fourth at the 150m mark - although I remember him turning sixth (I am sure the official records are right but I prefer to remember it that way as it underlines his astonishing swim).

In the final 50m, Sieben reeled in Morales (who came fourth), bronze medallist Rafael Castro (Venezuela) and touched out Gross, setting a world record and swimming four seconds faster than his previous best. It remains the single best Olympic swim I've ever witnessed.

It led to an unusual press conference. Gross, who had refused to talk to the media after his two previous gold medals, turned up this time but deflected all questions aimed at him by praising Sieben's achievement instead. As the young Aussie was almost tongue-tied by his win (he didn't realise he had broken the world record until an hour after the race, so far away were his thoughts at the time) that reporters quickly ran out of questions for this awestruck unknown and Gross did the talking for him.

It was a heart-warming and sportsmanlike moment.

New Zealand has yet to produce someone who could find the Sieben factor but McLean might. Burmester is going from strength to strength in the 200m butterfly and is already world class. He broke Danyon Loader's New Zealand record in Shanghai - enough said.

But you figure that McLean also has more to come. In Melbourne, she initially wouldn't speak to the media, as she was distressed at her fourths in the 100m and 50m backstroke, events where she might have won a medal. She won bronze in the 200m event but then swam an electric leg of the 4x100m medley relay - turning in a time that would have won the gold in the individual event.

She did the same thing in Shanghai, reeling off another superb swim in the same relay to break the New Zealand record yet again.

There were signs in Melbourne that maybe McLean's mental toughness was not quite together but Shanghai will have gone a long way to helping her marshal that. After Shanghai, New Zealand swim coach Jan Cameron - never one to use words cheaply - said that her team had shown the mental toughness required.

If that's so, watch McLean. She set a staggering seven NZ records in Shanghai and maybe, just maybe, the big Sieben-like swim awaits.