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Swimming New Zealand embarks on key training camp

Wednesday 26 May 2010, 12:00PM

By Swimming New Zealand

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NORTH SHORE CITY

Swimming New Zealand is staging a training camp this weekend specifically aimed at upskilling the country’s most promising butterfly and breaststroke exponents.

Head coach Mark Regan said that New Zealand swimmers, in general, were significantly behind the rest of the world in these two disciplines which is also holding back development of world class medley relay combinations.

“We have some good male flyers and one good male breaststroker but in general we are weaker in both the number and standard of butterfly and breaststroke swimmers, especially in the female ranks,” Regan said.

“We are around five seconds behind the world’s best over 100m breaststroke for females and two to three seconds away in butterfly.”

Regan said the strokes are the most technical in swimming which is one reason behind the lack of depth.

“Breaststrokers, for instance, are born, not made. We’ve got some promising talent and we want to work with them and their coaches to identify weaknesses and then help develop them.”

Swimming New Zealand will bring in their leading sport scientists Tom Vandenbogaerde and Antonio Cala to help the process.

The sessions to be held at the High Performance Centre at the Millennium Institute on Auckland’s North Shore will look at specific skills for starts and turns, biomechanical analysis and physiological input and filming the swimmers both on top and under the water.

Head coach for butterfly is Gisborne’s Greg Meade and Roskill’s Paul Kent for breaststroke, both of whom have special technical skills.

Other coaches involved are Brigitte Mahon (Kaiapoi), Carl Gordon (Ashburton), Glenn Findlay and Peter Burgon (Christchurch) and Gary Hollywood (Howick Pakuranga) along with Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Centre coaches Scott Talbot and Thomas Ansorg.

The swimmers are:

Breaststroke: Glenn Snyders (High Performance Centre), Luke Westgaard (Roskill, Auckland), Natasha Lloyd (Kaiapoi), Matthew Glassford (Neptune, Dunedin), Starn Simpson (Roskill), Jeffrey Afanoua (Howick Pakuranga, Counties Manukau), Kelly Briden (QEII Christchurch), Beckie Dooley (Jasi,Christchurch), Chloe Francis (HPC), Grace Francis (North Shore).

Butterfly: Moss Burmester (HPC), Corney Swanepoel (HPC), Shaun Burnett (HPC), Matt Thomas (HPC), Alex Hancock (Howick Pakuranga), Laura Quilter (Comet, Gisborne), Liz Brown (Ashburton), Josie Kydd (Ashburton), Samantha Lee (Capital, Wellington), Danielle Koni (Roskill), Charlotte Webby (Bell Block, Taranaki).