New Zealand swimmer Lewis Clareburt training at the Sir Owen G. Glenn National Aquatic Centre in Rosedale. Video / Jason Oxenham
With the Paris Olympics eight weeks away, the Herald counts down by heading to the pool to watch Lewis Clareburt train.
A couple months before the most momentous night of his life, Lewis Clareburt is spending the morning with his feet up.
It’s Friday at the Sir Owen G. Glenn National Aquatic Centre on the North Shore, but neither the day of the week nor Clareburt’s prone position should be misconstrued.
The mood is relaxed, yes, with the 24-year-old having recently set a world-leading time in the 400m individual medley, the event in which he hopes to bring New Zealand a first Olympic swimming medal since Danyon Loader’s double gold in 1996.
But the task this morning is slightly more taxing than most will want to face at the end of their week: one kilometre of backstroke.
In metronomic style, Clareburt completes two lengths of the 50m pool, pauses for a water break and stopwatch check, then gets going on the next leg.
There’s a clear plan behind this apparent punishment, and an able support group helping Clareburt enact it.
One member is similarly prostrate: a clubmate in the same lane on pacing duties, his pink snorkel and choice of freestyle indicative of the Olympian’s speed.
Another is seated poolside: Andrew Jeffcoat, who knows a bit about going fast while staring at the ceiling, having followed Clareburt to the top of the dais at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
And the head of this team is alternating between standing and pacing: coach Mitch Nairn, whistle between lips when not bellowing instruction to his star pupil or the dozen other Club 37 swimmers occupying this corner of the complex.
Mitch Nairn runs a session for Lewis Clareburt and Club 37. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Nairn assumed this role when Clareburt last year moved from his home in Wellington to an apartment in downtown Auckland, a definitive conclusion to his long-running battle for the type of lane space required by a world champion.
Right now, with the 400IM booked for July 28 at the Paris La Defense Arena, the role is twofold.
Priority No 1 is Clareburt staying healthy and staying in the pool, an encroaching winter adding complication. Priority No 2 is his breaststroke — attention to which will come later in the session — and backstroke.
The goal of these weekly trials is simple enough: go faster than last Friday. This morning, though, the swimmer is feeling a little less buoyant.
But as Jeffcoat outlines after marking the 10th and final time on a whiteboard, although his average is higher the team are buoyed by Clareburt’s consistency, maintaining pace deeper into the gruelling routine than he has previously.
Nairn has no desire to see the Commonwealth champion attack his backstroke, second in the medley order. By swimming slightly more conservatively through the leg, Clareburt can instead start faster in butterfly — his best stroke — while still conserving energy for the climactic freestyle.
“It’s a fine balance,” says Nairn. “We’re consistently working on all four strokes all the time but we’re still prioritising those two a bit more. It’s coming together well.”
Today’s results illustrate that; the plan is working. Further evidence came across the Tasman a fortnight earlier.
Lewis Clareburt and his team review training footage. Photo / Jason Oxenham
At the Sydney Open, Clareburt was within 0.01 seconds of his personal best, winning the 400IM with a time of 4m 08.71s, despite not tapering off his training load in a manner typical before big races.
“I had a bit of an inkling we could go quite fast,” Nairn says. “It would’ve been nice to be under that Oceania record and his New Zealand record but that puts us in a real good spot, leading the rest of the world.”
While a couple of Clareburt’s Olympic rivals have yet to swim the event in competition this year, the Kiwi and his coach know there remains gains to make in the next few weeks.
After a warm-down paddle featuring flipper-assisted freestyle, the focus switches to breaststroke, specifically turn speed and minimising drag during the pullout.
Clareburt repeatedly performs the manoeuvre — what happens underwater after a breaststroke swimmer pushes off the wall and before they surface — while his technique is captured by a contraption that looks like a measuring wheel with a GoPro attached.
Footage from the submerged camera is uploaded to a laptop precariously perched inside the splash zone, with teammates and support staff joining Clareburt and Nairn in analysing each frame.
Adjustments are then practised and praised, small tweaks that may mean the difference in stepping on an Olympic podium. A few lanes over, grey hair in place of swim caps, an aqua aerobics class begins.
