New Zealand Swimmers Within A Fingertip Of Toppling Australia
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Head Coach: Trevor Nicholls
Team Attending
New Zealand swimmers came within a fingertip of winning the Trans Tasman Cup age group series against Australia for the first time in Canberra today.
They won the final session over Australia Gold and Australia Green at the Australian Institute of Sport today – their second session win of the three-meet series – but were pipped for overall honours.
New Zealand finished just six points behind overall winners Australian Gold – with just one single victory from the 91 finals separating all three teams. (1st. Australia Gold - 607.5), (2nd. Australia Green - 604.5), (3rd. New Zealand - 601)
The series came down to the final two relays in the final session at Canberra with the Kiwi men’s 4x100m freestyle team finishing second to Gold by 9/100th of a second and the women’s medley relay edged into third.
It is the first time that New Zealand has won two sessions in the series – decided over two sessions at each of three meets in Sydney, Woy Woy and Canberra this week.
Two New Zealanders also won the honour as best individual male and female performance of the series, going to Palmerston North’s Cara Baker for her 400m freestyle in the second test which earned 891 FINA points and West Auckland’s Daniel Bell for his 200m backstroke at the same meet that scored 872 FINA ranking points.
The team won a further five finals in the final session going to Bell, 17 (West Auckland Aquatics) who scored a double in the 100m backstroke in 55.73 and 200m individual medley clocking 2:04.65. Starn Simpson, 16 (West Auckland Aquatics) won the 100m breaststroke in 1:03.87, Baker, 17 (Kiwi West, Palmerston North) took out the 400m freestyle again in 4:14.00 while Shane Patience (Waves, Dunedin) recovered from illness that hit him early last week to win the 800m freestyle in 8:07.99.
Gareth Kean, 15 (Capital) added a new record for the 100m backstroke of 55.73 to the 200m record he set earlier in the meet.
Overall the New Zealand squad scored an unprecedented 33 wins from the 91 finals. They set 17 new national age group records along the way with two New Zealand Open records.
“This is undoubtedly the best Trans Tasman Cup performance ever from a New Zealand team,” said Clive Rushton, Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Programmes Director.
“It is also arguably our best week of racing from a New Zealand team at any level. They were on the pace from the first event to the final swim. It was thoroughly impressive.
“This is an exceptional group of young athletes and this coupled with the performances from our youth development swimmers in the USA this month shows that New Zealand Swimming has some real potential looking to London 2012 and beyond.”
Mr Rushton said the performances were a tribute to national junior coach Trevor Nicholls in preparing the squad for the Tri Series.
Results Canberra - Session 5
Results Canberra - Session 6
For further information:
Ian Hepenstall, Sports Media NZ, Tel 0275 613181,
E: ianhep@xtra.co.nz
