That was the headline in today’s paper. The boys were keen to go and see..... the croc of course.
We had our standard racing day wake up and breakfast to drive away from Free Spirit by 6:30am, oh! and by the way you hometown breakfast preparer’s the whole team is now very used to bacon, eggs and hash browns so there may need to be some attitude adjustments when your swimmers/spouses return!!!
Today we faced a big challenge, how do we maintain the energy and intensity that we brought to the first day? simple (with apologies to Nike) - Just do it.
- Kurt kicked off the morning session with a great 200 brs into the final, Josh Freeman chimed in with a 3 second pb in 200 brs so the scene was set.
- Great 100 Free from Sam, Autahi, Emma, Richard, Ben 10 and Big Bad Ben (BBB) along with Swampy (Marshall) set up the day with some very committed racing.
- Claudia, Muriel, Alex and James all qualified for 200IM finals with James knocking out a 13 second PB.
- 50 Fly saw Evel pb and Kristie make the final. Sam Loves 50 fly was a 5 second pb.
- Claudia, Kurt, Alex and James all qualified for the 50 brs finals.
- More 50 fly action followed with Richard, BBB, Josh, Cameron, and Ben-10 all with Pb’s and Cameron into the final.
- Claudia and Muriel qualified for the 50 free final and Alex broke into the 27’s in his. 100 Backstroke
- Richard, BBB, Ben 10 and Cameron with pb’s and Cameron despite watching tennis for the whole race into the final. Autahi and Sam did Pb’s in the 100 brs (Sam’s knocked off over 20 seconds!).
- Finally around 12:00 noon BBB did a Pb of 8 seconds in the 400 free and Marshall dropped 5 seconds on his (He split the first 100 really well but then went to sleep so I ran around the end of the pool to remind him that it was actually a RACE he got the idea and recovered well)
- We changed our plan from day 1 today and had Roger bring Lunch from the resort and we ate and rested at the pool.
- James won the poker tourney, Cameron lost to Coach at Paper Scissors rock and Coach lost to Ben-10.
- While we were resting a journalist from the Territorian showed up because he had heard about our Haka the day before and wanted a story. He spent ½ hour talking to Autahi who made him really work for any information with a huge range of answers from “yes” to “no”. Anyway the upshot was they wanted to come back and get a photo of the boys in full flight so stay tuned.
- At 3:30 our yet to be finalists met with the coach to review the mornings work and reinforce the hydration and self care responsibilities for the afternoon. Kate Ryan caught a lizard with her bare hands!! This group then moved into the warm up to complete their afternoon swim.
- The finalists meeting focused more on the process of racing. If you get the process right then the outcome is inevitable. It was very hot on the pool deck today and (brace yourself) coach was actually seen downing 2 (that’s right 2) bottles of water!!!!
- So we settled in for the finals...the boys did another great Haka but the photographer missed the shot!!! ... the boys had to do a set up one for the journo, we await tomorrows paper with anticipation.
- Thats when the the fun really began and the power fails. Chaos! ...and a 20 minute delay they restart the meet and we race through the first few races because they have no electronics to declare results and no loud speaker to announce medals etc...
- By the time the power comes back on Kristie is poised behind the block for her 50 fly final but they stop the meet again! ...she waits 35 minutes for her race!!! Cool calm and collected she narrowly misses a medal from lane 1 but with a great time of 33
and some change. An outstanding swim form Kristie! - Autahi swims a 1:05.14 for his 100 free, 5th in his final.
- Claudia carries on where she left off last night and scores a closely fought silver medal in the 200IM and a 6 second pb for the day missing gold by only 0:0.12 of a second.
- Kurt is number one qualifier in the 50 breast final and gives it his all to score a bronze to go with his silver from yesterday.
- Claudia scores another medal in the 50 Free this time a bronze and her time of 29.00 is oh so close to the 28’s!!
- Cameron gets another turn on the dais with his 1:07 silver medal in the 100 backstroke.
Josh Freeman considers transfer to North Shore... KWA girls appalled by his new fans declare Josh persona non gratia (Shakepeare put it best “methinks she doth protest too much!!”)
KWA gear in high demand as more groups come to visit our spot during the day. Tim gets driving hints from 10 backseat drivers on the way back from the pool
Last but not least Richard (experienced presenter) and Coach (go-fer) get invited to live radio broadcast from pool tomorrow morning.
Medals today
- 2 Silver, 2bronze
- 2 Gold, 4 silver, 5 Bronze
Andrew (Live from the news desk)
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