Swimming: Doing it the hard way

By WARREN GAMBLE

As the limelight flared and flashed off Commonwealth Games medals at Auckland Airport this week, Melissa Ingram slipped by.

Weaving past silver medallist walker Craig Barrett's impromptu media conference, a small knot of family and schoolfriends greeted the 17-year-old Aucklander.

The youngest member of the swim team, she swam personal bests in Manchester at her first international competition. She made the final of her main event, the 200m backstroke, finishing eighth and setting a New Zealand age group record. She set another age group record in the 100m backstroke, where she just missed out on a final place.

Even after a 24-hour flight home, a 5.20am arrival and the knowledge that she had to be back in the water training 11 hours later, the buzz was still there.

"I suppose you kind of get a bug," she says, "just to keep on going, getting better and better."

The bug, nourished before Manchester with national championships and the occasional trip to Australia, is now in full bloom. It keeps her afloat during long lonely hours at the North Shore Millennium Institute in Mairangi Bay, where she is part of New Zealand coach Jan Cameron's bright hopes, including clubmate and backstroke rival Hannah McLean.

The bug has to be powerful. Her typical day is a daunting combination of training and schoolwork.

It starts with a 5am alarm ringing at her family's West Harbour home. She drives 20 minutes to the institute pool where she swims for two hours, covering 7km in a variety of strokes - she is the national 800m freestyle champion.

After breakfast she spends two hours in the gym doing strength training, mixing it up two days a week with pilates (part-yoga, part-dance and part-calisthenics).

By 11am she has driven across the city to Epsom Girls' Grammar school, where she is in the sixth form. The school has allowed her late starts to fit in her studies and training.

From the classroom it is back across the bridge to the pool for another two-hour swim session, 4pm to 6pm, before heading home for dinner and homework.

The programme is the same Monday to Friday. Saturday has pool and gym sessions, and Sunday is her only day off. At first she had to fight to keep awake at school, now it is just part of her routine. She admits to some days of wanting to ignore the alarm, but her goals get her out of bed.

A social life? "Basically, no. Swimming is my social life. The friends you meet through swimming are lifetime friends."

The group ethic at North Shore with fellow games swimmers like McLean, Dean Kent, Nick Sheeran and Cameron Gibson helps get her through the gruelling training.

Ingram left it late to achieve her Games goal this year, qualifying for the 200m backstroke in a final nerve-racking swim at the national championships in April.

But it paled beside the intensity of her first international competition in front of thousands of screaming English fans at the Manchester aquatic centre.

Her first race was a warm-up event, the 200m freestyle.

"I was shaking so bad on the blocks I thought I was going to false start. They held us for ages, I just about fell in.

"It wasn't so much nerves, just everything at the pool. The noise and the crowd going mad was just awesome. It was a really weird sensation, the adrenalin was absolutely pumping."

By the time she made the final on day five of the swimming, the experience was more familiar and her ability to block out the crowd had improved. Going flat out to qualify in the morning semifinal took its toll, though.

She says that in New Zealand the once-a-month regional competitions allow her to breeze through qualifying and save it all for the final.

Coach Cameron says such experiences are vital for swimmers such as Ingram to fulfil her great potential.

"She needs to get out in the big wide world and go up against the best."

Lack of regular international competition because of isolation and a lack of funding are perennial problems for New Zealand swimmers.

Ingram's family have to find the $2000 to send her to Yokohama for the Pan Pacific championships in two weeks - the reason the swimmers were back in the pool a day after the closing ceremony in Manchester and again when they got off the plane.

Cameron says the North Shore swimmers have the dedication to training to succeed, but need to test themselves internationally.

Ingram showed she has what it takes to handle the pressure at the highest level by setting the two age group records.

Ingram says she naturally wanted to go more quickly in the final, but was happy with her personal best.

"This was my first big meet. It's very common to freak out and not perform, so I was pleased with what I did."

After Japan her next aim is the world championships in Barcelona next year, and then qualifying for the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Anna Simcic's long-standing 200m national backstroke record is also in her sights. At 2m14s she is four seconds away.

But with her schoolwork suffering from overseas trips this year, she says next year will also have a greater emphasis on hitting the books.

It's a difficult balancing act, but Ingram has shown enough promise to achieve bigger and brighter rewards from the kilometres of churned up water in her wake.