By DAVE WORSLEY
New Zealand swimmers should feel confident about going into the nationals in Auckland next March to April if the form so far shown in the Auckland Open is anything to go by.
Although times don't count for qualification at the Auckland event it has helped give the swimmers accurate
ideas of where their form is and what they have to aim for.
On day two of the event two swimmers beat qualifying Athens Olympic times.
Hannah McLean went under the 100m backstroke qualifying time of 1min 02.93s with a swim of 1m 02.57s, finishing ahead of Elizabeth Coster and 15-year-old Kelly Newcombe.
Not to be outdone, Cameron Gibson swam under Olympic time in the men's 200m 17 and over race with a time of 2min 01.22s, nearly a second inside the qualifying time.
He was ahead of several good swimmers in the form of Dean Kent and Anthony Van Der Kraay and managed a very good 100m split time of 59.86s.
Alison Fitch swam a good race in the 17 and over 100m freestyle, breaking the race record of 57.64s with a time of 57.15s, still a way off the Olympic qualifying time of 56.06s and the New Zealand record she holds of 55.99s.
Fitch finished ahead of Atlanta Olympian Sarah Catherwood, also from the North Shore club.
Third was Norie Urabe from Japan.
A New Zealand record was broken in a non-Olympic event with Elizabeth Coster, 21, from the North Shore Swim Club touching the wall at 27.82s, which was .05s under the old record held by Monique Robbins in 2000.
Saturday's races feature a large number of top names against each other with the 100m men's freestyle expected to see West Auckland's Herring brothers, Mark and Brad racing Japan's Kenji Kobase and North Shore's Corney Swanepoel.
In the 100m freestyle women's race Fitch takes on Sachiko Yamada and Urabe and the men's 200m backstroke should be interesting.
Gibson, Van Der Kraay and Kent are favourites, in that order.
The main open finals are held at 4pm with age groups finals to follow.
