The countdown to the Birmingham Commonwealth Games is nearly over. In just 10 days time, 233 Kiwi athletes will don the fern on the world stage and do their country proud.
Many are household names. The likes of Tom Walsh, Dame Sophie Pascoe and David Liti are all hot favourites to be standing atop the podium in the coming weeks.
But others, like swimmer Andrew Jeffcoat, are quietly flying under the radar.
The 22-year-old from the small Coromandel town of Colville heads to Birmingham as one of the top ranked backstroke swimmers in the Commonwealth. His coach says "the sky's the limit" for the ever-improving Jeffcoat, yet, not many will have ever heard of him.
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Birmingham will be Jeffcoat's first Commonwealth Games appearance and the biggest competition he has competed in to date. Only last month he competed in the long-course world championships for the first time.
Jeffcoat celebrates his 23rd birthday on Friday and will hit the water on his Commonwealth debut a week later in the 100m heats.
He said it had been a "gradual process" to get to this point.
"It's been a bit of a journey to get to this point to be honest ... but to compete on the international stage is great."
The Waikato swimmer will compete in three backstroke events in Birmingham. (Source: 1News)
At the world champs, he finished 13th in the 50-metre backstroke and 18th in the 100-metre backstroke. Not results that immediately jump off the page. So why the hype?
Because the best backstroke swimmers in the world right now come from the US and mainland Europe, i.e. not the Commonwealth nations.
In fact, while Jeffcoat finished 13th in the 50m, he was in fact the second-fastest swimmer in the Commonwealth behind Australian Isaac Cooper - who finished seventh.
Likewise, in the 100m, Jeffcoat was the fourth fastest Commonwealth swimmer. Cooper was once again the fastest but didn't even make the final.
Jeffcoat is ranked third in the Commonwealth in both 50m and 100m and told 1News while he wasn't focussed on the podium, a personal best time would go a long way to securing a medal.
"It’s quite an honour to go and represent my country. All I can say is that I want to PB, and if I PB then that gives myself the best chance at a medal," he said.
"It’s just about going there and trying my best and if I can go the fastest I’ve ever been and step up on the Commonwealth stage then that’s all I can really ask for."
Coach Mitch Nairn told 1News "the sky's the limit" for Jeffcoat.
"There's been a lot of ups and a lot of downs but we’ve always come through on the stronger side of things...there was never any doubt in my mind we'd be sitting where we are today. It's been very special as a coach to see Andrew become the swimmer he is today."
While a strong performance in Birmingham is the primary focus right now, Nairn said the "overall goal" was the Olympics - Paris 2024 and potentially even Los Angeles 2028.
"We have some pretty hefty goals we'd like to achieve. We've still got a lot of things to develop and work on. We're not ruling out anything at the moment," Nairn said.
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