Swimming: In at the deep end helps love grow

In the wake of Danyon Loader swimming fell on hard times, but there's one couple very grateful they were thrown into the deep end.

Scott Talbot-Cameron and Helen Norfolk were just 16 when they were chosen for the national team.

"It was depleted and weak because the stars like Danyon had left. It was crazy. We hung out quite a bit because we were by far the youngest."

The tyranny of distance - she was Christchurch, he was Auckland - meant the relationship never advanced past friendship. Norfolk has since moved north and they have been a couple, both 24 next month, for two years.

Next week they head to Canberra for an AIS race meet against their Australian counterparts as part of preparation for the championships at Montreal in July.

"That's our big focus. We've been going pretty full-on since the end of March, building up our endurance base," Talbot-Cameron said.

For Norfolk, the worlds will be used as a launching pad for a drive towards medals at the Commonwealth Games but Talbot-Cameron is still not sure whether he will swim at Melbourne. While he's swimming "the best he ever has", he has yet to commit that far ahead.

Instead he's hoping to final at the worlds in his specialist 100m backstroke event and the men's 4x100m relay. "That's a realistic goal and I'd be really happy with that."

Norfolk's performances in Athens last year, where she missed the 400m individual medley final by .05 of a second, sees her confident of medalling at Melbourne.

"I was ninth which hurt a lot."

Norfolk just missed a personal best but conditions at the Athens pool were brutal, with no protection from the close to 40-degree heat.

"I've never seen so many people chunder after their race," she said. "I wasn't one of them but there were people sneaking behind the curtains and spewing."

Talbot-Cameron looks the perfect build for a modern rugby halfback rather than a swimmer but you can't argue with the genetics.

His dad is former Australian swim coach and taskmaster Don Talbot and his mother is North Shore coach Jan Cameron, almost single-handedly credited with turning the sport's fortunes around when it looked possible it would sink without causing as much as a ripple.

His roomie is butterflyer Moss Burmester. Surely he gets sick of swimming?

"No, not really. I don't see my dad very often, he lives in Aussie. I used to be sick of swimming when I lived with him but my mother, nah, not really. Moss and I don't really talk much about swimming."

He does acknowledge it has been hard in the past having your mother as coach. "I did find it pretty difficult. It was all the time."

Talbot-Cameron works mainly with Thomas Ansorg while Cameron works principally with the middle- and endurance-distance swimmers.

Which is where Norfolk, a 400m and 200m individual medley specialist, fits in.

"She's fine. It's totally separate. When I'm round at their place for dinner she's not Jan the coach, she's Scott's mum, and when I'm at the pool she's Jan the coach."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY