Paris Olympics: NZ swimming team to split build-up ahead of Games

Kiwi swimmer Erika Fairweather. Photo / Photosport

The New Zealand swimming team will be split in their build-up to the Paris Olympics, after one group of athletes – including current world champion Erika Fairweather – opted against taking part in Swimming New Zealand’s planned preparation camp in Mallorca.

It means the Paris-bound women’s 4x200 metre freestyle relay team won’t train as a group until the full New Zealand squad of nine assembles at the Olympic Village in the French capital, just days out from the start of the games in late July.

Swimming New Zealand’s Olympic preparation camp had initially been booked in for three weeks in Mallorca from June 30, for its full squad to train and build camaraderie. However, the governing body has instead been forced to shorten the camp by one week, to put money into setting up a second, simultaneous training camp at an indoor facility in Monaco from July 6, where Fairweather and fellow Dunedin-based swimmers Caitlin Deans and Kane Follows will train instead with their coach Lars Humer.

While current world and Commonwealth medley champion Lewis Clareburt put much of his success at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games down to his positive mindset after weeks of training in the tropical Mallorca sunshine, other athletes did not want to return to the Mediterranean island.

Swimming New Zealand’s team leader for the Paris campaign, Gary Francis, confirmed six swimmers, including Clareburt, will still head to Mallorca.

“The Dunedin group made it quite clear early on that they really didn’t want to go to Mallorca,” Francis said.

“Mallorca was the place that made Lewis feel really good. Erika on the other hand, coming from Dunedin, where none of those guys are sun worshippers at all, they find it a lot more difficult to acclimatise to a training environment in an outdoor sunny environment … they much prefer an indoor arena.”

With both Clareburt and Fairweather genuine medal chances at Paris after wins at February’s world championships, Swimming New Zealand was forced to find a solution that takes into account the pair’s vastly different desires for training locations.

Francis said because the Mallorca facility had already been booked, it wasn’t feasible to shift the entire team to the new location.

“From a finance perspective we could never send the whole group, and the whole group didn’t need to go to Monaco, as it was really geared towards people who wanted to swim inside, so that was why we did that,” Francis said.

The move means Fairweather and Deans will prepare for the 4x200 metre freestyle relay without teammates Eve Thomas and Laticia-Leigh Transom, with the quartet only linking up on July 21 in Paris, 10 days before they are scheduled to race the event.

Francis denied this will impact the relay team’s ability to succeed.

“It’s not as if it’s crucial that they’re always together for that part of the build-up, because most of the time they wouldn’t be practising their relay changeovers, they would do that in quite specific little workouts.

“We will probably come together for about three sessions [in Paris] where they’ll work together on their relay changeovers, and they did that quite independently most of the time in our build-up to our last couple of competitions. It’s not something that’s really a concern”.

Francis is also dismissing any impact the two separate training locations, and the limited preparation time together, will have on the wider team’s morale.

“We’ve got such a strong group in terms of their culture, of their beliefs … they all respect each other’s individual needs.

“Any risks you feel about whether it affects the culture, it’s negated by the fact we’ve already got to the point where we’re really sure these athletes all know what they’re doing, all know why they’re there, they’ve all got very ambitious goals so we’ve got to respect their individual needs as much as we can”.

Six of the nine swimmers representing New Zealand in Paris – Deans, Follows, Cameron Gray, Hazel Ouwehand, Taiko Torepe-Ormsby and Laticia-Leigh Transom – will be making their Olympic debuts, while Clareburt, Fairweather and Eve Thomas return from Tokyo.