Swimming: Athens relay hopefuls left stranded on starting blocks

By DAVID LEGGAT

New Zealand swimming officials will be anxiously watching their laptops next month.

They will be awaiting the results of the relay events at the European championships, which start in Madrid on May 5. The times recorded will have a significant bearing on the size of New Zealand's contingent for the Athens Olympics in August.

Swimming NZ have six athletes confirmed for individual events and have named seven others to take part in three relays, in the belief the swimmers have done times good enough to secure a trip to Greece.

However, they are at the mercy of the times put in by other nations over the next couple of months, and the European championships are chief among those events which could hit Swimming NZ's hopes.

At the New Zealand championships last week, a 4 x 100m men's medley recorded a time of 3m 40.86s, which would have had them ninth in the world last year; the equivalent women's team did 4m 09.14s, chopping close to eight seconds off the national record, for 12th on last year's rankings; and a women's 4 x 200m freestyle team closed 8m 12.90s, also good enough for 12th.

Under the criteria for the Olympic relays, the top 16 countries compete by invitation. Twelve invitations were issued at last year's world championships in Barcelona, leaving four spots open.

The men should be cast-iron sure of going and, as long as four other countries don't post quicker times, the women should be on the plane.

Those affected are Alison Fitch, Elizabeth Coster, Ben Labowitch, Nathalie Bernard and Scott Talbot-Cameron of the North Shore club, Rebecca Linton of Howick Pakuranga and Annabelle Carey of Wharenui in Christchurch.

"We're reasonably confident our times will stand up," Swimming NZ high-performance director Clive Rushton said yesterday at the formal unveiling of the Olympic team.

Conflicting information about when those invitations are likely to come has Rushton less than impressed. One piece of information suggested it might not be until July 21.

"That's just nonsense, ludicrously unacceptable," Rushton said. "We now have to write back to them to get a much clearer indication of what they are doing."

Meanwhile, the swimmers will prepare as if they're off to Greece.

The entire squad will have two or three camps at North Shore as part of their preparation, there is competition in Australia and the Oceania championships in Fiji next month.

The squad head to the island of Kefalonia - an hour's flight west of Athens and best known as the setting for the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin - for a camp shortly before going to the Games village around August 8.