It's a busy winter for some of our best swimmers, with world championships and the Commonwealth Games both squeezed into a three-month window.
But for one of our best, the challenge is simply about rediscovering the love for the sport again.
Lewis Clareburt told 1News he lost his love for swimming last year, as he felt weighed down by the constant ongoing Covid restrictions and the disappointment of falling agonisingly short of an Olympic medal.
This year, he says he has no goals except to have some fun.
“Just having a good time, but also racing fast. That’s probably the goal I want to achieve.”
At the Tokyo Olympics last August, Clareburt was half a race away from an Olympic medal in the 400m individual medley. Leading midway through the race, the 22-year-old ran out of gas down the stretch to touch the wall in seventh. His time of 4:11.22 was nearly two seconds slower than his personal best set in the heat. Had he swum the same pace, he would have won silver.
READ MORE: 'The piano fell' - Clareburt says he ran out of gas in 400 IM final
It’s a result he says took a long time to get over.
“I still swam really fast, two seconds over my PB is actually still pretty quick, but it wasn't my PB so I guess that was the hard part to comprehend in my head that I didn't swim the fast as I could when I needed to.
“But yeah, it also gives me motivation to be able to fix that to be able to figure out how I can do better next time and motivate me towards the next competition.”
He’s had plenty of time to think about it. The World Championships will be the first international competition he has competed at since the Olympics last August.
But Covid struck him down just a few weeks ago and Clareburt concedes it will likely make it hard for him to be at his best in Hungary.
But he has his eyes firmly set on being at his best at the Commonwealth Games.
In Birmingham, Clareburt will line up in the 200m and 400m individual medley, and also has permission to start in the 200m freestyle.
A bronze medallist in the 400m IM at the last edition on the Gold Coast, Clareburt believes he has come a long way since then.
“I've learned a lot how to handle myself around the pool how to communicate better with providers to get the most out of it. I've got a huge team that works around me 24/7 and we sort of need to be like a well-oiled machine.
"I've had to really learn how to communicate with people better, how to train myself, how to push myself and try things and that's where those small little gains have come from for sure.”
One of his main focuses for improvement has been his breaststroke, which he admits has let him down in competition.
“Breaststroke has been a stroke that I've been trying to work on for four or five years now, and it's one that I just have never quite cracked.
“I don't think I'll ever be a world record holder but I'd love to be faster. It would make the whole package of a 400IM a lot easier to put together if I would could just swim faster in the breaststroke.
“I'm having to make up for it quite a lot in all the other strokes so I'm constantly trying to figure out ways that I can get faster and be more efficient and take the pressure off some of those other strokes so I can bring the whole package together and just swim faster.”
It’s the same stroke that the legendary Michael Phelps also struggled to master, and Clareburt says he has trying to take a leaf out of his book in finding ways to improve.
“That was definitely his weaker stroke, although he was still two seconds faster than what I split in my breaststroke, or just under 2 seconds. It’s not that much of a difference I guess but I definitely do look at what he does and you can see how strong he is across the board as well.”
Clareburt travelled to Europe over the weekend to begin preparing for the world championships in Hungary that begin on June 17.
After the world championships, he and the rest of the New Zealand swimming team will travel to Mallorca for a training camp prior to the Commonwealth Games that begin on July 28.
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