Swimming: Naylor to argue Olympic causes

SYDNEY - Brett Naylor changes from national swimming coach to master negotiator when the New Zealand team to compete at the Olympic Games is considered over the next week.

Although some went close at the Australian swimming championships in Sydney this week, there were no additions to the squad of seven New Zealanders who have qualified for the Games.

Naylor will sit down with officials from Swimming New Zealand and the New Zealand Olympic Committee next week and his first task will be to convince them that the qualifiers - Nikki Tanner, Helen Norfolk, Toni Jeffs, Dean Kent, Scott Talbot-Cameron, Steven Ferguson and Jonathan Duncan - have been consistent enough to get the nod.

His next task will be to push the cases of some who have swum consistently well for the past 12 months but narrowly missed qualifying. Three with the best claims are Monique Robins, Nick Sheeran and Liz Van Welie.

Jeffs produced a solid 26.40s in the women's 50m freestyle yesterday to round out New Zealand's involvement at the Sydney meeting.

It was the fourth-fastest time in the heats, while Robins was seventh-quickest with 26.54s, a little too far outside the Games qualifying mark of 26.05s to help her Games cause, but she recently swam 26.09s.

Ross Dunwoody was an impressive fifth with 27.14s in the men's 50m backstroke, a non-Olympic event.

While Naylor said it would have been nice to see some more qualifiers this week, he realised it was a tall order given their hectic schedule.

"Some of the athletes are quite shattered," Naylor said. "They're into their third month of high-quality racing.

"Physically they're tired but also psychologically. Each time they get up for a meet they're heading for that challenge.

"For a lot of them it would have been easy to pull the pin and get on with life but they've taken up the challenge this week and I'm very happy about that."

The New Zealand squad will be named before the Oceania championships in Christchurch next month where Danyon Loader and Trent Bray will require world-class performances to force a late inclusion.

Naylor said both had the natural talent to do that.

- NZPA

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