Record Medley Swim

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31583, 22 January 1968, Page 18

Record Medley Swim

Tui Shipston’s coach, Mr J. Breward, went without his lunch in the excitement surrounding his charge’s magnificent 4 4 oyd medley swim during the first session of the Canterbury championships at the Centennial Pool on Saturday.

Miss Shipston, aged 16, not only shattered her own national senior record for the event by 3.7 sec, but also beat the tough Olympic target time by o.2sec. She became the first New Zealand swimmer to earn nomination for the 1968 Olympics, “My lunch is still sitting on my desk,” admitted an elated

Mr Breward at 2.30 p.m. “I get the jitters, too —what coach wouldn’t?” Mr Breward, who taught Miss Shipston to swim at the age of nine and who has guided her throughout her competitive career, said his charge was “a wonderful swimmer and a wonderful girl. “But she has got something that no coach could give her,” he added. “You cbuld call it

determination, but after today it is something more than that." In only her third serious effort at the event this season, the slim Miss Shipston recorded smin 31.8 sec, to come within I.Bsec of the New Zealand all-comers’ mark established two years ago by the American girl, Mary Ellen Ol-

cese, who also holds the world mark at smin 25.1 sec. Mr Breward drew up a schedule of lap times, based on the target time of smin 32sec, but Miss Shipston knew nothing of this when she hit the water. Her judgment of pace was so good, however, that her times for each stroke were almost identical with those mapped by her coach. For the butterfly leg her Imin 16 sec placed her Isec ahead. She lost half a second on the backstroke (Imin 23.5 sec) and breaststroke (Imin 38.5sec> legs, but stormed home a fifth of a second inside the freestyle target of Imin 14sec. Mr Breward said great concentration had been paid to butterfly in recent training sessions, and Miss Shipston’s breaststroke had “come right.” She had done a good deal of sprint work in ill strokes. “She will go away for the tour races against the Candadians with confidence in herself.'- he added.