Quick out of the blocks
New world champion Erika Fairweather has her favoured event up first in Paris as she seeks to upset two swimming legends. Ian Anderson reports.
‘Ilove starting the meet with a bang.” It’s exactly what Erika Fairweather will aim to do when the swimming programme begins at the Paris Olympics. The newly crowned world champion in the women’s 400 metres freestyle will be in action on the opening day of the swimming programme, contesting her favourite event the day after the opening ceremony.
“The way the programme is set out enhances my racing,” Fairweather told the The SwimSwam Podcast this week.
The 20-year-old from Dunedin will also contest the 200m and 800m freestyle events at the 2024 Olympics starting at the end of July, and will also likely be part of a 4x200m freestyle New Zealand women’s relay team.
But her world championships victory in Doha in February came in a field without legendary US veteran Katie Ledecky, 2023 world champion Ariarne Titmus of Australia and Canadian teen sensation Summer McIntosh.
Yet Fairweather’s victory – in which she lowered her personal best time by breaking the four-minute barrier in 3:59.44 – simply continued the rapid progress she has made in the past three years.
She sprang to New Zealand sporting prominence at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, when she was a shock qualifier for the 400m freestyle final, in which she finished eighth.
At last year’s world championships, Fairweather won bronze in her specialist event, breaking her national record with a time of 3:59.59 to finish behind Titmus (first in a world-record time of 3:55.38) and Ledecky, with McIntosh fourth.
“Last year when I got that bronze in Fukuoka, it was an eye-opening moment, ‘I can actually do this’, like, medal on the world stage, which is something that I kind of didn’t think I could do before.
“I was like ‘oh, maybe I’ll get a final here or there’, and maybe competing in that five/ sixth/seventh position.
“But to do that was really a breakthrough moment for me.”
Fairweather won three medals in Doha, claiming silver in the 200 free and bronze in the 800m, and told the podcast that the experiences would greatly aid her in Paris.
“Little things, like just getting up and racing in a performance environment – you walk out and there’s a crowd ... we don’t get that very much here, so just being comfortable in that pressured environment was a massive learning curve.
“My 200, I would have loved for it to be a little bit faster. But I think some of the training that I’ve done will transfer later on.
“I haven't swum a lot of 800 internationally – so I swim them a little bit whack. I seem to go out for it in the first 200 then like die a painful death,” she laughed.
“That’s something I'll be working on in the next few months anyway.”
While many of the world’s best skipped this year’s world championships – held earlier in the year than usual due to the Olympics – Fairweather still got plenty of confidence out of her success.
“I got what I set out to accomplish,’’ she told the podcast.
“I didn’t really care where I ended up
“Having potential shots at medals is where I want to be going into the Olympic Games this time.”
Erika Fairweather
in the [400 free], as long as it was sub-4. Doing a PB as well was great in February – you should be able to swim fast at any time of the year, so I was just really glad that I was able to pull that off when I did.”
Fairweather admitted she’d changed focus a lot since her Olympics debut. “I’m in a very different position to what I was back then.
“I was a 17-year-old kid then, I had no idea what I was doing, I didn’t really think I was going to make a final. I was absolutely shook to the core, I couldn’t believe I made an Olympic final.
“Having potential shots at medals is where I want to be going into the Olympic Games this time.”