KEY POINTS:
A week is supposedly a long time in politics. In the world of Moss Burmester, just one day can seem like a lifetime.
The Commonwealth Games gold medal winner was a brooding, smouldering mass of discontent earlier in the week when the clock was proving a foreboding opponent.
He got grumpy, couldn't shake himself out of it and his form just wouldn't come. A day off on Friday was critical.
That was time to do some serious thinking and exorcise the demons lurking in the grey matter. It also provided space to deal with the scalding words delivered by high performance manager Jan Cameron.
Cameron provided an honest, none too cuddly assessment of Burmester's work early in the meet and told him to harden up.
"I pretty much had a day off on Friday and worked on a few things myself, upstairs in my head," said Burmester after swimming 1m 56.89s for the 200m butterfly - his second equal best time and just 0.25s outside the time he swam in Melbourne. "My mental approach wasn't as good as it should have been so I sorted that out. I got better during the meet as I did more racing.
"I think having a slower race at the start puts you down a bit but you have to overcome those sorts of things."
He certainly did overcome things, starting yesterday. With a new-found intensity, he nailed the qualifying time for the 200m butterfly in the morning heat. That took the pressure off and boosted the confidence, allowing him to start the final with genuine hopes of breaking his personal best.
"I didn't have a great start to the week and I expect the best from myself all the time. I had a good swim this morning and I was looking at going quicker than I did at the Commonwealths and I wasn't far off."
He was through 100m quicker than his splits in Melbourne and when he went through 150m at the same mark he had nine months earlier, the New Zealand record was in his sights.
But with no fellow competitor sighted in his peripheral vision, there wasn't enough to push him on to a new record.
That lack of competition and intensity was also brought up by Helen Norfolk, who was in the pool straight after Burmester.
Norfolk won the 200m freestyle in 2m 00.93s, a time that granted her a place at the world championships and vindicated her decision to move away from the individual medley.
"I really wanted to qualify the other night in the 400m freestyle but I just got it completely wrong," she said.
"I knew tonight I could beat the time if I really concentrated but it is quite hard to get yourself up at a meet like this. We are used to the big guys and when you are way out front, it is quite hard.
"I always had this idea that I would go back to individual medley and I probably still will. I will reassess after this meet but it will more likely be after the world championships."
Norfolk's achievement brought to seven the number of individuals who qualified for next March's world championships, leaving Cameron upbeat and confident about New Zealand's prospects.
"We had some very good swims and the swimmers really stepped up as we went through the meet," she said. "We have had a higher number of people improve their times.
"It was pleasing to see Moss respond so well. He had a bit of a rocky start and some of the swimmers are used to being on an international high. It was a little bit flat but they certainly rallied. We are going to be much stronger at the world championships in our times than we were at the Commonwealth Games.
"Probably the only one who would have been faster than the Australians was Corney Swanepoel's 50m butterfly. In the 200m fly, Moss is either equal or very close. Those are the two events which we are ahead of the Aussies. In the rest, we are on the chase again."
