Three more New Zealand swimmers dropped out of contention in the heats at the Olympic pool yesterday.
The pick of the three was 200m individual medley entrant Dean Kent, who won his heat and came within less than a second of making the evening semifinals. Kent finished 23rd overall -
four places higher than his Olympic ranking - just .78s outside a top 16 spot.
However, Monique Robins and Scott Talbot-Cameron were off the pace in the women's 100m freestyle heats and the 200m men's backstroke.
Robins, the baby of the team, finished sixth in her heat in 57.85s, more than a second off her personal best of 56.72s.
Robins needed to swim 56.33s to have made the semifinal - .14s under the New Zealand record held by Olympic team-mate Vivienne Rignall.
She finished 27th fastest, six places higher than her ranking going into the event.
Talbot-Cameron, son of Australian head swim coach Don Talbot and New Zealand assistant Olympic coach Jan Cameron, finished second in his heat to Dutchman Klaas-Erik Zwering.
Zwering stopped the clock at 2m 0.94s, with Talbot-Cameron, 20, swimming 2m 01.53s, a tenth of a second off his best. Any hopes he held of being among the 16 fastest for the semifinals were doused when 13 swimmers from the next two heats beat his time.
That left him 15th fastest with the big guns in the final heat yet to swim.
A disappointed Cameron said Talbot-Cameron was usually half a second faster over the final 50m, and that was the margin by which he missed the semifinal.
"He said afterwards 'I just went as fast as I could'. I said 'Yeah, but if there was a car on your back you might have been able to find .5 (of a second), you'd have lifted it off'," Cameron said.
He improved his Olympic ranking four spots to 22nd.
Both swimmers suffered from youth and inexperience, Cameron said, but was at a loss to put her finger on why they underachieved.
New Zealand are now in danger of failing to place a swimmer in an Olympic final for the first time since 1964.
"I don't understand it. We've worked harder this time than we've ever worked before," Cameron said.
- NZPA
