KEY POINTS:
Moss Burmester's focus is now on the Olympics after joining swimming's elite by winning gold at the world short course championships in Manchester yesterday.
The 27-year-old from Tauranga surprised himself and team coach Jan Cameron by blasting the the 200m butterfly field away to become
New Zealand's first individual world short course champion.
Burmester also went within a whisker of joining the flood of new world record-holders at the five-day meet, but that mattered little as he stood atop the dais, sporting a gold to match the colour won in the same event at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
But to complete the set is the hardest task of all - winning at the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
"It's a fantastic confidence boost for me and a nice title to have," he said.
"The world record would have been nice to get but I got a big pb [personal best], a Commonwealth record, so I was very happy with that.
"But the real focus is on the Olympics. This has given me a real lift to work even harder now through to Beijing."
He powered away from the field to win in 1m 51.05s, just 0.32s outside the world record of French swimmer Franck Esposito, who set his mark six years ago.
The only realistic challenge came from highly-rated Russian Nikolay Skvortsov who finished strongly, but he was 0.78s behind Burmester, who only faded slightly over the final 50m.
Cameron said Burmester's performance was the crowning swim of an excellent week for New Zealand and launched him into a new category.
"He's now a world champion. He's got style and substance, he's shown what a true champion he is," she said.
"If you're making the finals here, you're in the world class bracket. If you're winning them, then it's another story all together."
New Zealand also picked up a second medal yesterday, bronze to the men's 100m medley relay team of Daniel Bell (backstroke), Glenn Snyders (breaststroke), Corney Swanepoel (butterfly) and Cameron Gibson (freestyle).
Their time of 3m 27.15s was 8s faster than any New Zealand combination had ever swum and enough to head off Australia by 0.36s.
But they were well behind winners Russia and the United States team.
New Zealanders qualified for 11 finals at the championships and 21 national records were lowered.
"It's the first step in our progress towards Beijing. We're on track but we've got lots of work to do," Cameron said.
"This is a short course competition and it was really for racing purposes.
"I thought we could learn about how to get up and how to win, and they've done that.
"We're better off coming out than we were going in, so in that sense it's a big success."
Cameron's comments were made to a backdrop of noise as Burmester was acknowledged by his teammates.
"It's a really happy team, a cohesive team," Cameron said.
"All these swimmers went quicker in the relays than they did in the individual events."
Burmester cast his mind to the next four months and what would be required to overcome an Olympic field likely to include American sensation Michael Phelps and China's Wu Peng, who were both missing from Manchester.
"It's going to be a tough battle, a close battle for the medals at Beijing," he said.
"It's the pinnacle event so everyone's going to train hard for it and I'll be the same."
As he did at Melbourne (Commonwealth Games), Burmester was significantly faster in the final than the heats.
He was the sixth fastest qualifier in 1m 54.46s and only scraped into the final by 0.47s.
New Zealand's only previous medal at the short course championships medal was won by a men's relay team in 1995.
No other New Zealanders were involved in finals yesterday.
Melissa Ingram was 10th and Helen Norfolk 11th in the women's 200m freestyle heats, while Bell was 15th in the men's 200m backstroke.
NZ SUCCESS AT WORLD CHAMPS
2008*
GOLD - Moss Burmester 200m
butterfly
BRONZE - men's 100m medley relay
2006*
SILVER_ Burmester 200m butterfly
BRONZE - Hannah McLean 200m butterfly
2004*
BRONZE - Melissa Ingram 200m backstroke
1997*
SILVER - Trent Bray 200m freestyle
1995*
GOLD - 100m medley relay
SILVER - Trent Bray 200m freestyle
1994
SILVER - Danyon Loader 200m butterfly
BRONZE - Loader 200m freestyle
BRONZE - Loader 400m freestyle
1993*
SILVER- Trent Bray 200m freestyle
1978
SILVER - Gary Hurring 200m backstroke
*short course
- NZPA
