19-year-old Kiwi Erika Fairweather became the sixth fastest female 400 metre freestyle swimmer in history this month, breaking the New Zealand record with a 4:00:62 time at the New Zealand championships.
The teen from Dunedin balances study, work and more than 22 hours of training each week. Fairweather shares withthe Herald how she was initially disappointed with her record-breaking result and the secrets of swimming most people don’t know.
What is your lifestyle as a swimmer?
I do nine swim sessions, two gym sessions and one pilate class a week. All up its about 22 plus hours of training a week. It’s a pretty full-on lifestyle, especially mixing it with work, study and social life. Balancing a social life can be difficult at times but I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by a bunch of close friends already in my training environments.
What was that feeling knowing you’d smashed the NZ record and become the sixth fastest 400m freestyle woman in history?
It was a really funny moment for me — I had a lot of emotions going on. I was after a sub-four minute swim, so to see a time just over that was frustrating. I actually didn’t realise it was sixth fastest until probably 30 minutes later. Then I kind of started to realise that it was a pretty groundbreaking swim to be done on home soil.
What’s something most people don’t know about swimming or freestyle specifically?
In a freestyle race, you can do whatever you want to get to the other end. You’re just not allowed to touch the ground.
Each time I hit the wall I always take a second to catch my breath before I glance at the time. I have a pretty good feel for my time so I can usually predict pretty accurately how the race has gone and what the time might be. It’s always nice for it to be faster than I thought though.
Erika Fairweather. Photo / Photosport
When you are leading a race, do you know about it? How often are you looking at your opponents?
During a race, you have a pretty good idea of where everyone is if you’re in the centre lanes. Once you move further outwards it gets harder to see across the pool as people start blocking your view. A good time to check out where everyone’s at is during turns, you get a better angle from underwater. There are not too many underwater secrets but one of the fun things to know about is that coaches have different signals that they wave to swimmers on the side of the pool. This helps them communicate during a race but it can look pretty funny when watching it.
What do you enjoy most about swimming?
I love challenging myself in the race arena. It’s a showcase of all the training and extra things I do to better my performance. It’s crazy the lengths I would go to for mere millisecond improvements.
Freestyle is your game - how do you perform in other strokes?
I’m 100 per cent a freestyler at heart. I don’t normally dabble in other strokes while racing but when I’m building my base foundation or aerobic fitness I will definitely add them in to switch things up.
What’s your biggest achievement or career highlight?
There’s definitely been lots of career highlights and big achievements so far. Becoming the sixth fastest woman of all time would have to top the list of biggest achievements, but racing in an Olympic final is a very close second.
One of the most memorable swims I’ve had might not have been my best result but it was the women’s 4x200 at last year’s world championships. We raced in the morning and finished ninth so we didn’t qualify for the final. While we were back at our hotel recovering we found out that a team scratched and we were in.
I’ve never seen a team come together the way we did, not just the four girls but the entire NZ team. We walked out for that race and had so much fun being in a world championship final. The rest of the team was seated in the furthest corner from where we were but they were the loudest and most certainly the proudest. We got seventh in that race, going much faster than the heat. But personally, I will never forget looking up at them before the race and feeling so lucky to represent my teammates.
Erika Fairweather in action at the Tokyo Olympics. Photo / Photosport
What are your career goals and how will you achieve them?
I definitely have my goals but l like to keep them on the down low. In five years I definitely still see myself swimming. Swimmers generally peak around their mid-20s so fingers crossed I’ll be in my prime. I think I just need to continue doing things in a similar way to what I’m doing now. It’s worked well so far so I don’t see a reason to make a drastic change.
What motivates you?
My end goal. Competing at pinnacle sporting events around the world has always been the dream. I’ve worked hard enough now to be competitive amongst the other big dogs in the swimming world which is exciting, especially coming from a little nation like NZ. Another motivation of mine is that I get to be a part of a team. We are all very much family when we travel. So it’s pretty special to be able to support your mates while we’re all doing something we love.
