They'll have a hard job after London, although they will have a strong advocate in Alex Baumann, head of HPSNZ and a two-time Olympic swimming champion and world recordholder for Canada.
During the Games he spoke of the sport's potential, before a pile of below-par times were produced, and is hardly likely to resile from that view.
Swimming is one of six Olympic sports given favoured funding status over the last four-year cycle - athletics, triathlon, rowing, cycling and sailing the others. It's hard to argue they deserve to retain their place in that group.
SNZ is also busy getting its house in order.
Having accepted the Moller report into restructuring the sport's administration at a special general meeting in late July - at which all regions signed in favour of a new constitution other than its largest grouping, Auckland, and Nelson Marlborough who abstained - pieces are being put in place.
Chris Moller, chairman of New Zealand Cricket, and a former head of the same sport, Sir John Anderson, are on the independent appointments panel, charged with getting the governance sorted out.
After the previous board resigned, as per one of the Moller report's recommendations, Horst Miehe of Counties Manukau and Waikato's Simon Perry, were elected to the IAP, which is now shortlisting for a chairman.
The board will eventually comprise three nominated and three elected people and is due to be in place by late October. For the moment, SNZ is in a holding pattern, with O'Connor and governance administrator Sue Suckling managing the shop.
A key decision will be appointing a high performance director. SNZ hasn't had one since Jan Cameron stepped aside late last year. Rushdee Warley, who ran the Olympic campaign, is employed as a high-performance coach at HPSNZ, but SNZ's first choice for the high-performance boss withdrew at a late stage.
SNZ's biggest problem right now is perception; that it is a sport getting through a period of turmoil out of the water, underperforming in it. O'Connor accentuated the positive, confident the old enmity is in the past: "We now have an opportunity and I think everyone's bought into it. Everyone is wanting to move the sport forward."
