Northland swimmer Hayley McIntosh has qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, thanks to a brilliant swim in her final shot at qualifying over the weekend.
The 22-year-old smashed her personal best in the 1500m freestyle at a meet in Hamilton on Saturday night, to beat the qualifying time needed to make the squad for Tokyo.
It continues a wonderful year for McIntosh, who had set a personal best of 16:35.11 when she won the event at the national championships last month.
She still needed to shave over three seconds off her time at the final qualifying event in Hamilton, and did so with ease, clocking an impressive 16:28.96.
The Tokyo Games are the first to feature women in the 1500m event. Previous Olympics had only featured races up to 800m in the pool.
McIntosh is the sixth New Zealander to qualify for an individual event in Tokyo.
Lewis Clareburt (200m & 400m IM), Ali Galyer (200m backstroke), Erika Fairweather (400m freestyle), Eve Thomas (1500m freestyle) and Zac Reid (800m freestyle) had already met the qualification standard.
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