Swimming: An eye for the Main chance

Backstroke swimmer Corey Main beat the Games standard by 16/100ths of a second in the 100m. Photo / Getty Images

Teen swimmer from Howick Pakuranga first newbie to beat Commonwealth standard.

Howick Pakuranga backstroke swimmer Corey Main is the first of the newbies to join the established stars by bettering the Commonwealth Games qualifying standard at the State New Zealand Open Championships in Auckland last night.

The 19-year-old surprised himself with his personal best time of 54.47s in the morning heats, bettering the Commonwealth Games standard by of a second in the 100m.

It brought the total of qualifiers to six individuals - four able bodied swimmers and two para-swimmers - and the men's 4 x 200m freestyle relay team.

"This morning I was trying to just go out to swim my race and it resulted in going under the trials time which I wasn't really expecting," Main said.

The teenager, in his first year of a scholarship at the University of Florida, won the final, although slightly outside his heat time with a 54.81s effort.

"Tonight I wanted to go out to beat my heat time but didn't quite achieve that but I am so happy to get that qualifying time."

Dunedin father Kurt Crosland, 29, from the Neptune club, again pushed hard all the way to clock a personal best 54.88s which was of a second outside his dream of qualification for Glasgow.

However, the remarkable Sophie Pascoe added yet another world record to her long list when she clocked 31.62s in the 50m backstroke.

The Cantabrian, who has six Paralympic gold medals and five IPC world titles to her credit, was of a second inside her own previous world record.

US-based North Shore swimmer Glenn Snyders completed his clean sweep of all breaststroke events when he won the men's 50m final in 27.38s, which was 0.3s outside his own national record, but good enough for the third-fastest time in the world this year. This latest effort in the pool followed Snyders' qualifying performances in winning the 100m and 200m breaststroke titles with top swims earlier in the meeting.