Swim star’s lane change
AUSTRALIAN swim team captain Tom Fraser-Holmes says he has no desire to step away from the sport despite confirming he will skip this year’s national titles and world championships.
Fraser-Holmes, co-captain of the Australian team for the past few years, has made several changes to his program since the Rio Olympics, including splitting with longtime mentor Denis Cotterell to join Richard Scarce at Bond University.
But that partnership will not be on show at the most significant meets of the year – the national titles and world championships – with FraserHolmes taking time out in a move he believes will ensure he lines up at a local Common- wealth Games and third Olympics in career-best form.
“Going into my third Olympic cycle I wanted to just start 2017 and the first year of the quadrant trying something a little bit different,’’ he said.
“I’m not stepping away from the sport at all, it’s just stepping aside from the national team and having a different set of goals for the next four or five months to ensure the longevity of my career and ensuring that I’m in the best shape that I can be at the Comm Games next year and going into Tokyo.’’
Fraser-Holmes is set to implement major changes to his program, dropping the 400m individual medley – in which he has made the final at the past two Olympics – to concentrate on freestyle events.
But almost like a high-performance vehicle going in for an overhaul, he does not want to roll the new machine out before the engine is fully finetuned.
“Obviously everyone wants to be the best in the world and world champion and Olympic champion but sometimes you just have to take a step aside and evaluate what you’re doing and make changes,’’ Fraser-Holmes said.
“It’s OK to try something different these couple of months.’’
Fraser-Holmes said he had agonised over the decision but received strong support from Scarce and will head to Europe to compete in the Mare Nostrum series with his Bond University squad mates later in the year.
He will not take a break from training instead saying his decision was about taking a different path but one he felt would bring out his best.
“I’ve been doing the same thing for eight or nine years now where I’ve prepared for trials and then gone away to a major meet and to get to Tokyo, I feel like I need a bit of a change-up this year and just take a different approach,’’ he said.
“(If I just keep repeating the same thing), then I’m just the same swimmer I was five years ago and that’s going to get me the same results.
“I believe it will know it will work.
“I think just things up (is good).
“Maybe I would’ve (maintained that hunger if I’d competed at worlds this year) ... only time will tell but I’m really happy I’ve made the decision for the sake of my longevity in the sport.
“I’ve got 12 months to make changes that I need to do and really implement new habits into my training with new changes.” work, I changing