Tandy sails towards Gold Coast

Win lines him up for spot at Games

BRAD Tandy, who endured what might be the most bizarre international debut at the last Commonwealth Games, laid his marker yesterday to be selected for next year’s showpiece. The Tandy torpedo may not have been fully primed, but he still sailed along the Kings Park pool to win the 50m freestyle in 22.33sec by more than half a second.

The next three finishers, fellow Olympian Doug Erasmus, Ryan Coetzee and Armand Maritz all dipped inside the qualifying time for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, although a nation can enter only a maximum of three swimmers per event.

The closest race of the night came in the men’s 200m backstroke where Martin Binedell, 22, had to fight back to touch in 1min 59.59sec to down matriculant Jarryd Baxter, 18, by six-hundredths of a second. Both were inside the qualifying mark.

Dune Coetzee and Brent Szurdoki achieved qualification in their second events of the gala, the 200m butterfly and 1 500m freestyle, while Erin Gallagher ended her campaign off with victory in the 50m backstroke.

With the trials ending today, 28 swimmers have achieved the times.

Tandy, tied sixth in the 50m freestyle at the Rio Olympics, has established himself as SA’s premier pool sprinter and will be one of country’s top medal hopes outside Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh if he is selected for the Gold Coast.

Ranked third in the Commonwealth, the US-based 26-year-old has earned veteran status since his first step onto the international stage at Glasgow 2014, where his first two races were made memorable by freak occurrences.

While preparing for his 50m breaststroke heats at Glasgow 2014, his goggles snapped.

And while diving in for the semifinals, he dislocated his right shoulder and then it returned into position in the water, but that resulted in an illegal movement that saw him disqualified.

“I have an extravagant dive,” Tandy said. His dive, however, is one of the best in the world, and the key, he said, was using his entire body – pulling with his arms while also kicking hard enough with the back leg to get it higher than the hips in the air.

Tandy’s electric start propelled him into the lead in the biggest race of his life, at the 2016 Games, where he led for the first 35m or so.

“My goal going there was to make the semifinals. I thought I’m in the final, I’m eighth, I can enjoy it,” he said.

“By making the final, I had achieved beyond my expectations.

“But I changed my mindset. When I woke up, I thought: ‘Why have fun? Why not go out and try to win?’”

Tandy has studied the race many times since, and noticed that in the latter stages he started spinning instead of keeping a longer stroke.

“The first thing to go were my legs. I’ve been doing more kicking training,” Tandy, who still clocked a 21.79 personal best that night, said.

He lowered that to 21.7 winning the US Open earlier this year.

Now he has new goals, like breaking Roland Schoeman’s 21.67 national record.

US-based Tandy, who grew up in Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, stayed on in Tucson after finishing his Management Information Systems degree at the University of Arizona, doing part-time coaching.