Julian Drew : Swimming
Eighteen months is a long time in swimming. At the 1994 world swimming championships in Rome Penny Heyns placed sixth in the 100m breastroke final in a time of 1:10.46 and fifth in the B final over 200m in 2:33.57.
Those performances received barely a mention in the nation’s sports pages and gave little indication that the then 19- year-old would break the world record within 18 months and sweep to a double Olympic victory four months later.
The winner of both breaststroke titles in Rome was Australian Samantha Riley – two years older than Heyns – who lowered the world record to 1:07.69 in the 100m event to further underline her credentials.
Eighteen months beyond the Atlanta Olympics, where the eagerly anticipated Heyns-Riley clash never materialised, the world once again seems likely to be denied the spectacle of a head-to-head confrontation between Heyns and Riley at their peak when the swimming sessions at the eighth World Swimming Championships in Perth get under way on Monday.
This time it is Heyns who has gone off the boil and despite a degree of optimism from the Nebraska-based swimmer in November when her new training programme looked to be putting her on the right track, she is unlikely to get close to Riley who is in the best form of her life.
While swimmers – like any athletes – go through cycles when their form can dip, much of Heyns’s slump can be attributed to her hectic appearance schedule after the Olympics which did not allow her to concentrate on swimming. Add to that the fact that she didn’t have the highly competitive American collegiate season to get herself into shape last year – as well as a change in coach – and it is easier to understand where she lost her edge.
Heyns seems much happier with her new training programme which began in October but she has probably left it too late to be a contender for the title in Perth. Her new programme is geared towards the 100m and although she will still race the 200m, it is over two lengths of the pool that she will have her best chance of doing well.
But even without her current problems Heyns’s task in Perth would have been much more difficult than in Atlanta. Despite the absence of Olympic silver medallist Amanda Beard who failed to qualify – she has grown 10cm since the Games and is no longer a teddy bear-hugging pre-pubescent water nymph – there are a whole host of fast newcomers and the familiar figure of a back-to-form Riley to contend with.
Riley was expected to challenge Heyns in Atlanta but flopped after a traumatic build-up to the Games. She escaped a drug suspension after inadvertently testing positive from a headache tablet given to her by her coach. She never recovered from that setback and was considered past her prime after a disappointing Olympics where she won only a bronze medal in the 100m. But Heyns can draw hope from the way Riley bounced back with 100m and 200m wins over the South African at last year’s Pan Pacific Championships in Japan.
At the Australian trials in October Riley served a warning for Perth with the best 100m time of her career, 1:07.66. Only Heyns’s two world records of 1:07.46 in Durban in March 1996 and her Atlanta time of 1:07.02 are faster. To top that Riley twice swam faster than Heyns’s Olympic record in the 200m, winning at the Pan Pacifics and the trials.
Perhaps the real challenge to these two “old ladies” of swimming – Heyns is now 23 and Riley 25 – will come in holding off the new guard which is ably represented by Agnes Kovacs of Hungary. Just 16 and improving all the time, Kovacs – who won bronze in the 200m in Atlanta – swam a 1:08.08 to win the 100m at the European championships and was just 14 hundredths of a second outside the world record in the 200m with her 2:24.90.
Wei Wang of China (16) is another who could feature after her Asian record of 1:08.28 in October but as with the rest of the Chinese it remains to be seen whether she can repeat that performance in the presence of doping controls in Perth.
Not to be outdone South Africa has its own water baby in the form of Sarah Poewe (14) whose 1:10.37 from the Pan Pacifics put her in the top 30 in the world.
sport/htmldoc.htmThe only thing likely to cast a shadow over Perth is the presence of the Chinese team who have again been accused of drug abuse after a series of astonishing reslts at the Chinese National Games in Shanghai in October. In Rome in 1994 the Chinese won 12 of the 16 women’s gold medals but a month later 11 Chinese swimmers – including several medallists from Rome – tested positive in random drug tests before the Asian Games.
With the spotlight on China and an increase in drug testing, Chinese standards fell dramatically and they won only one women’s event in Atlanta. but in Shanghai their women broke two world records and swam four of the second fastest performances ever and they now top the rankings in 10 women’s events.
Even more startling was that the two swimmers who broke world records were not even in the world’s top 50. If they sweep the board in perth few will believe the Chinese women did it unaided, particularly as their male swimmers don’t perfrom at the same level.
Heyns inevitably grabs most of the media attention in a South African swimming team which means that our other truly world- class swimmers remain largely anonymous. In March Rk Neethling became the first South african male swimmer to win an American collegiate title in over 20 years and was looking forward to swimming some good times a the Pan Pacific Championships in August.
Unfortunately Neethling was struck down with shingles in Japan and although he managed to qualify for Perth in the 400m freestyle, his time was not what he was expecting and he withdrew frm his favourited 1 500m freestyle event.
Neethling’s recent training times at the University of Arizona have been his best ever though and he now believes he can swim a time close to 15 minutes for the 1 500m in Perth. That could put him near the medals where new Australian sensation Grant Hackett (17) will battle it out for gold with Italy’s European champion Emiliano Brembilla, who is one of only seven men to break the 15minute barrier.
South Africa’s other American-based team member Brendan Dedekind is ranked 11th in the world in the 50m freestyle wtih his 22.62 from the Pan Pacifics – just outside his personal best 22.59 from Atlanta where he came fifth. Dedekind has also gone well in training and will be looking to improve on his Atlanta time in a race which should go to Australian-based Olympic champion Alexander Popov of Russia.
Theo Verster in the 100m and 200m butterfly and 200m individual medley, and Charlene Wittstock in the 50m and 100m freestyle make up the rest of the South African team and t hey will have to swim personal bests to stand a chance of reaching a B final.
In the 100m butterfly Verster will race against Australian Michael Klim who looks as though he could be the star of the championships. Coached by Popov’s trainer Gennadi Touretski at the Australian Institute of Sport, Klim has improved dramatically under the Russian maestro.
Klim broke the world record in the 100m butterfly at the Australian trials and is ranked first in the world over 200m freestyle and second over 100m where ironically it will be popov who stands in his way for the gold medal.