Hazel Ouwehand, 26, is now ranked in the top eight globally in swimming. Photo / BW Media, Swimming NZ
Dave Crampton for LockerRoom
In 2022, Hazel Ouwehand was the country’s only swimmer to fail to swim a final at the Commonwealth Games.
She also failed to qualify for the 2024 World Championships.
Now, Ouwehand, 26, is the country’s top sprinter and ranked in the top eight in the world this season.
Unreasonable qualifying standards for sprinters in stroke events, set at making the world’s top six, were designed by Swimming New Zealand to ensure sprinters like Ouwehand did not qualify in 2024, as such sprints were not Olympic events.
They are now – and Ouwehand has risen to be one of the country’s top swimmers. She is the only swimmer to break national open swimming records in each of the past three years since she reached her first.
In her favoured 50m butterfly, she’s targeting 24.80s at July’s Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Even if she clocks under 25.20s and none of the top swimmers do big lifetime bests this year, she’d be on for gold and the Commonwealth record.
“That’s the point,” Ouwehand says of her target time. “You have to reach for the stars.”
Taking a Commonwealth record would be quite the achievement for someone who just over three years ago had not even won a national title. But Ouwehand is dedicated, determined and hard-working.
“I’m resilient and persistent; I’m like that annoying rash that never goes away,” she says.
Ouwehand is also one of only three Aquablacks to meet tough qualifying Glasgow standards so far. These standards were aligned to potential podium placings, set with the intent that few would meet them as the New Zealand Olympic Committee, which selects teams for the Commonwealth Games, has said just 10 swimmers can be sent to Glasgow.
Ouwehand was one athlete expected to meet the times and is the only swimmer not funded by High Performance Sport New Zealand to get anywhere close. When she qualified in February, she briefly ended atop the 2026 World Aquatics 50m butterfly rankings.
“I found out I was world number one when Amanda White [Swimming New Zealand staffer] told me. I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that, that’s really cool, that’s awesome.’ I don’t really look at rankings,” she recalls.
“The intention was to go in and qualify. It wasn’t a big celebratory thing, it was more like an ‘oh, thank God’.”
Now a potential medallist in 50m butterfly and ranked third in the Commonwealth so far this year after most countries’ trials for Glasgow have concluded, Ouwehand is gunning for gold.
Her lifetime best is quicker than her February season best. Should she be successful, she will join just six Kiwi wāhine swimmers who have won gold and will be just the second since Anna Simcic won two backstroke golds 36 years ago.
But racing a one-length 50m sprint event leaves no room for error.
“It’s going to be tight, yeah,” Ouwehand says. “Obviously, the plan is to be in prime condition for that one. Every teeny tiny little detail matters. I reckon it will be a good race with Perkins, Erin Gallagher, and myself.”
Alexandria Perkins, this season’s top-ranked Commonwealth swimmer, has her Australian trials in June. However, should another Kiwi, teenager Zoe Pedersen, hit her straps at trials, she could be in the mix. She is the 50m butterfly world junior champion. Her lifetime best is the same time as Gallagher clocked at last week’s South African trials: 25.63s.
Despite her ability to clock close to or under lifetime bests multiple times over recent years, Ouwehand is always looking for ways to improve. One big change she has made is on her start off the blocks, which must be ironed out further before stepping on the blocks in Glasgow.
“I’m constantly trying to work on my start, particularly the dive. It’s something I’ve been working on for months,” she says. “In the last two years, my dive has changed tremendously. I used to have my right foot forward on the blocks. I have my left foot forward now because my right leg is my stronger leg, so that’s on the back on the kicker. For a while, that felt alien.”
This week’s national championships in Auckland is the final opportunity for Ouwehand to perfect that dive in her attempts to meet that 100m butterfly qualifying mark for the Games. She says she is keen to lower her 50m season’s best too, after perfecting her acceleration off the back kickplate on the blocks and, more importantly, go on to do her best in Glasgow after bypassing last year’s World Championships in Singapore. Her lifetime best there would have medalled, but she remained in New Zealand to focus on a training block for Glasgow.
She says she would like to get the 100m butterfly time “for my peace of mind; but even if I don’t get it, I’ll almost certainly have permission to swim it anyway”.
Last year, Ouwehand was awarded a $30,000 Yvette Williams scholarship. This scholarship assists athletes who display both exceptional talent and need and demonstrate hard work and determination to excel in their chosen sport.
In 1952, Williams (later Dame Yvette Corlett) was the first woman to win Olympic gold for New Zealand. The scholarship was established in 2013 through a $500,000 gift from Sir Owen Glenn through the Glenn Family Foundation and is administered by the New Zealand Olympic Committee, which also selects Commonwealth Games teams.
The scholarship, which extends until the Commonwealth Games, has assisted Ouwehand with costs associated with altitude training in the USA and China this year.
“The scholarship is great. If I didn’t have it, I would not have gone to China and I may not have got to altitude training in America, or to the World Cup series in Canada last year,” Ouwehand says.
Ouwehand can also reapply for the scholarship after Glasgow for the following two years leading up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. She says a successful application will depend on results at the Commonwealth Games, “but what they are essentially saying is if I win a gold medal then I’m going to have a better chance – that’s kind of what they are looking for – which is the whole purpose of the scholarship, anyway”.
Auckland accountancy firm Baker Tilly Staples Rodway, where Ouwehand has worked since 2021, is particularly supportive of her swimming.
“They have supported my swimming ever since I started working there almost five years ago,” she says. “They allow me the ability to take time off to go to these competitions. It is incredibly rare to find corporate employers who allow young working professionals to work part-time and continue to pursue their sporting endeavours.”
While Ouwehand is naturally competitive, she acknowledges that because of her focus on swimming, some of her workmates who started at the same time as her are currently one or two levels her senior, as they work fulltime.
“It’s taken me longer to go up each level. I have all the time in the world to move up the ranks, but I only have a limited window for my swimming – and that is the focus now,” she says.
“I’m very aware that my swimming career has a limited life, but I can work until I’m 65 or 70 if I want.”
*Ouwehand and Pedersen swim the 50m butterfly on Wednesday morning, day one of the National Championships in Auckland.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.