Corney Swanepoel: Testing the waters: Olympic diary

COMMENT

It's not long now until we jet off to Greece, next week in fact. Most of the team are getting a little nervous now, the coaches too, but more than that we are excited.

In our training, we are doing a lot less mileage but more quality work. All that means for me is that I am swimming sets in which I pace how fast I want to go out in the first part of my race, and then work on the skills that I need to incorporate that will keep my speed up when my body starts hurting.

My coaches are happy with how things are coming along. This week has been hectic sorting the last few things out. Getting our racing togs and caps (they are awesome!) and seeing our team masseuse who will be going with us.

Whenever I tell someone I am off to get a massage, they think it's all fun and games. They don't know the truth that sometimes it's torture when you are as tight and stiff as I was this week. After my massage I could barely walk.

But it was well worth it the next day when my legs were fresh and we had an especially hard set.

It's been a long week for us, as we didn't have our usual Sunday rest day. Instead we had the Auckland relay championships, a good meet for us to practice for the games.

On Monday morning we were grumpy and stiff. Our coach let us off with a "mediocre" training session, but the evening session was a killer. .

Every training session that I do well and hit my times and even go faster makes me more confident - confident that I will be able to swim my race as I want and confident that I will go faster than I ever have.

So after having survived the first day of the week, we had a breakfast with the sponsors of the Millennium Institute on Tuesday morning to thank them for the help and support they have given us, and also for them to wish us well.

I tried to listen to all that was said but it was hard because we had just finished training and were starving, so food was really my first priority.

But one thing that Mike Stanley - chief executive of the Millennium Institute, double world championships rowing gold medallist and Olympic oarsman - said in his speech did stick with me.

He said that "we are just supporters; we have no right to judge their goals - those are their own". And it's true, everyone is impressing on the athletes that they must win medals and if not they have failed.

Whether or not that is the athlete's goal, it's not what the Olympics are about.

Surely everyone would want to win a gold medal, and see their country's flag being hoisted.

The Olympic Creed reads: "The most important thing is not to win but to take part. Just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

How many of our supporters know that in the history of the games only 1000 Kiwis have represented their country there. That's a huge achievement and honour in itself.

"Swifter, Higher, Stronger" is the Olympic motto. Not swifter, higher, stronger than everyone else, simply just Swifter, Higher, Stronger.

Corney Swanepoel is in the New Zealand swimming team for the Olympics