KEY POINTS:
Glenn Snyders' dream run at the Olympic swimming trials in Auckland continued today when he qualified for the 200m breaststroke at Beijing by shaving another huge chunk off his personal best time.
Snyders, who had already qualified for the 100m breaststroke, won the 200m final in two minutes 13.05 seconds, more than a half a second inside the standard.
The time was also 1.42sec better than the personal best he achieved in the heats last night, and 2-1/2sec faster than he had swum before the trials began.
Snyders, 20, said he had been as surprised as anyone at how quickly he had stopped the clock.
"I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to qualify," he said.
"I was just going to give it my best shot and I was stoked when I saw the time. I'm just relieved and kind of surprised as well."
The North Shore swimmer credited a stronger mental approach and a "smarter" training programme for his performances this week.
He said perfecting his technique as one of the things he would continue to work on.
His goal in Beijing would be to go under his personal best times, including the 1min 00.50sec for 100m he recorded in the heats on Tuesday night.
"I think, in the 100m, to medal you're going to have to go under one minute," he said.
"That's my goal. I've got four to five months to work on that."
Snyders is one of five individuals who have gone inside qualifying standards in the meet so far.
New Zealand have also confirmed themselves a place at Beijing in the 4x200m women's freestyle relay.
Two other individual qualifiers, North Shore clubmates Moss Burmester and Helen Norfolk, were also involved in finals this morning.
Burmester, who regained his Commonwealth 200m butterfly record with a 1min 54.99sec time in the heats last night, duly won the final in 1min 55.50sec.
"It would have been nice to have gone quicker again," he said.
"Still, that's my third best swim ever, so I'm still reasonably happy with it."
Norfolk had two races with scarcely a 15-minute break between them - the 200m freestyle and the 200m individual medley - and won both.
She had qualified last night for the 200m individual medley, to go with the 400m medley qualification secured earlier.
But she was unable to complete the hat-trick by adding the 200m freestyle, her time of 2min 01.05sec being outside both her personal best and the cut-off of 1min 59.29sec.
While the outcome was a disappointment for Norfolk, it didn't rate as a major one, as a clash in the Beijing programme would have prevented her from competing in both the 200m freestyle and the 200m medley.
One of her goals for the freestyle final had been to try to be the first New Zealand woman to go under two minutes.
"I just wanted to put myself under pressure and swim under fatigue and see what happened," she said.
"That was a tough race. I had some good competitors there. I would have liked to have gone a little bit faster, but it was a good race."
- NZPA
