OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sydney | Tuesday 12.15pm.
SOUTH Africa’s Penny Heyns continued her remarkable comeback to swimming’s big-time on Monday, shattering her own world record for the 100m breaststroke at the Pan Pacific championships, a year after vowing to quit a sport she had begun to hate.
Heyns’ fifth world record in five weeks – and her fifth in as many races – fell when she won her morning heat at Sydney’s Olympic pool in a super-slick 1:06,52. The 24-year-old was 0,28 seconds under her own record pace by halfway and stretched out to wipe almost half a second off the 1:06,95 mark she set in Los Angeles last month.
”To be honest, I knew I was going to do it as soon as I dived in,” Heyns said. ”I was unshaved and untapered (unrested) when I broke the records in Los Angeles. I knew I could go faster here, although you never take world records for granted.”
Already a dual Olympic champion, with the 100m-200m breaststroke double at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Heyns is currently in the best form of her career, or any female breaststroker’s career for that matter.
Of the eight world records she has set during her career, five have been in the last five weeks. At the Janet Evans Invitational in California in July, she broke her 100m world record in morning heats, then lowered it again in the evening finals. A day later, she beat Rebecca Brown’s five-year-old 200m world record in heats and, for good measure, also wiped it out in the finals.
”I don’t want to pressurise myself – I’m happy with what I’ve already done. But I feel I could have a done a little better on the last 50,” she said.
Incredibly, Heyns was so disillusioned with swimming a year ago she wanted to quit.
Fted as a national hero in her native SA after her historic achievements in Atlanta, Heyns found it difficult to re-focus herself to training after the Olympic celebrations finally died down.
She began to slide down the world rankings after parting from long-time coach Jans Bidrman when he accepted an offer to train at Canada’s Calgary University and she decided to stay in Nebraska, where she had been based for years.
She failed to win any medals at the 1998 world championships in Perth and then withdrew from the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. A devout Christian, Heyns decided she had had enough before turning to her faith for inspiration – a moment she says turned her life around.
”So I packed my bags and went to Calgary to join up with Jan and just got back into it. I now believe the disappointments of 1998 are starting to work for me.”
As testament to her revitalised belief in herself, Heyns even paid her own airfare to Sydney to compete at the Pan Pacs, although she will not go away empty-handed.
In becoming the first female swimmer to set a long-course record in Sydney’s new Olympic pool, Heyns collected an A$25000 bonus. — Reuters