KEY POINTS:
Dean Kent and Zoe Baker are the first swimmers to have booked places in the New Zealand team for next year's world championships after the opening day of the trials in Auckland.
Baker, 30, went under the qualifying time in a 50m breaststroke semifinal and Kent, 28, in the 400m individual medley final.
Kent, who has been training on the Gold Coast with members of the British team, swam 4m 20.31s in the 400m medley just inside the qualifying time of 4m 21.08s.
"The times are getting really tough," Kent said. "In 2000 when I qualified for the Sydney Olympics I had to get 4m 25s, there is a fair drop which makes it harder for the younger guys coming through but it is a good thing."
Kent was a little disappointed in his time but admitted he'd only had a short tapering-off period.
"It was a matter of coming down and getting your race speed up. It was a short preparation but I was still hoping to swim a little bit faster than that.
"You set high standards for yourself and I didn't quite achieve what I wanted to. I gave it my absolute best and at least I can be satisfied with that.
"I know for sure that I have made a lot of improvements. It is just annoying that it might not be until the world championships until I see the fruition of all the hard work I have put in."
Just missing on qualifying in their events last night were Hannah McLean in the 100m backstroke semifinal and Corney Swanepoel in the 100m butterfly semifinal.
McLean needed 1m 02.49s but swam 1m 02.98s. Swanepoel was chasing 53.54s and got 53.65s. Also gunning for the 100m butterfly time was Moss Burmester, who got 54.04s.
All have another chance in tonight's final. Cameron Gibson will also be looking to qualify tonight in the final of the 100m backstroke.
North Shore's Glenn Snyders just missed out on the national record in the 200m breaststroke final.
Snyders recorded 2m 16.05s, just a fraction outside the 2m 15.98s set by Kent in April.
The qualifying time is 2m 14.83s.
Swimming New Zealand's high performance programme director Clive Rushton said the opening day provided some "very close misses".
"They'll be disappointed they didn't get it out of the way tonight. Because they have the final they'll be learning, putting it into their memory bank and watching the film of the race when they go back to their hotel and putting some tweaks in.
"The pattern is hopefully they'll do the heats, the semis and then go faster in the final, it tends to build up like that," Rushton said.
The world championships are in Melbourne in March.
