Swimming: Palmer power

Hayley Palmer says she can win a gold medal at the London Olympics. Photo / Getty Images

Hayley Palmer doesn't lack ambition. The 21-year-old freestyler departs today as part of a 10-strong New Zealand team heading for the Pan Pacific Games in California, a precursor to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October. But Palmer has her eyes fixed on the greatest prize of them all.

"London is still two years away but I am looking at getting a gold medal there in at least one event."

Call it youthful naivete. Call it blind ambition. Palmer calls it self-belief.

"If I believe I can do it then one day, I will get there," she says. "I've always been a relatively confident person. If I didn't truly believe it, I wouldn't be here. It is just way too hard to do something for the fun of it. A lot of it is just having to tell myself, 'yes, Hayley you are good enough, you know you want to be here'."

It seems churlish to remind Palmer of the obstacles and weight of history she is up against. New Zealand has claimed just seven Olympic swimming medals in almost a century and three of those (two golds and one silver) went to the freakishly talented Danyon Loader.

Malcolm Champion took a relay gold for Australasia back in 1912, while Paul Kingsman and Anthony Mosse grabbed bronzes in Seoul in 1988. Jean Stewart was the first - and only - New Zealand female swimmer to stand on an Olympic medal podium when she took bronze in 1952.

Jan Cameron, national high performance manager, says:

"She has got a belief and she is going after her goal. She will temper that with the work, the preparation and the ongoing results but the bottom line is unless they believe they can get up there, what the hell are they doing? We should support people going after high goals and give them every bit of encouragement. We can't trundle along thinking we are not going to get somewhere and then all of a sudden stick our heads up and say, 'why weren't we on the podium?'."

Moss Burmester, long swimming's flagbearer in this country, says he was impressed with Palmer's attitude from her early days in the team in 2008.

"I remember her being very focused," Burmester says. "She did the little extra things; the things that weren't compulsory but she went ahead and did them anyway which showed a determined young woman."

Palmer got her first taste of the big time in Beijing, where she was a surprise late inclusion in the women's 4 x 200m freestyle relay. Her best moment to date came at last year's world championships in Rome.

The only woman to make the team, she twice set new national records in the 100m freestyle, becoming the first New Zealander to dip under the 54s barrier. Palmer missed the final by a whisker but her time of 53.91s ranked her 11th in the world.

Since those heady days, the swimming landscape has changed dramatically, with the removal of the full-body hi-tech super suits in January this year. Cameron says it has wound the clock back to the days of 1998, with suits now only made of fabric and no more coating in telflon or rubber.

Men are back to virtually wearing shorts (no tops allowed) while the women are restricted to backless suits. Palmer concedes the rule change is a double-edged sword:

"As much as I liked the suits - I liked the way I felt in the water - I think that the change back is a good move. It has made us think differently about how we train and it is going back to what swimming should be about - talent, hard work, technique and plain grittiness."

Coach Scott Talbot says it has been a sometimes painful adjustment: "Along with a lot of other kids of that generation, she has never swum without them. You have to re-learn some things and psychologically it has a massive effect. You can mask a lot of things with the suit on and it really exposes you when you don't."

Palmer, who left for England as a three-year-old, claims she didn't take swimming seriously until she returned to New Zealand at the beginning of 2008.

"Up until then I had been riding on natural ability. Once I decided that this was what I wanted to do, I had no idea what it would take. I was shocked by how much I had to catch up on." "

Palmer "sleeps in" every morning until 6am (her younger sister, also a swimmer, wakes at 4.45). She spends six morning and five afternoons a week training in the pool as well as daily gym sessions. Palmer is currently ranked fifth in the Commonwealth but Talbot is clear: "We are not going over there for anything other than a medal."

Palmer will have to break her personal best yet again to join the 31 New Zealand women to medal at a Commonwealth Games and she is ready for the pain that goes with glory. That pain will be managed by a healthy dose of self-belief.