Emma Godwin after a string of medal-winning success at the short-course championships in 2022. Now she’s taking one last chance to qualify for the Olympics, at the national swimming championships in Hastings this week. Photo / Paul Taylor.
Napier swimmer Emma Godwin’s Olympic Games dream is on the line at the national championships and Olympics trials this week in Hastings.
The championships at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Aquatic Centre run from Tuesday to Saturday, but crunch time for the 200m backstroke hopeful is Friday morning.
All going well, Godwin and possibly one other, will have by the time the final is swum in the evening beaten the A qualifying standard for Fina (International Swimming Federation) needed to earn a trip to Paris for the games from July 26-August 11.
Turning 27 later this month, the former Iona College pupil, who has been swimming competitively for 14 to 15 years, recognises it’s the one, last chance.
The youngest to win the women’s 200m backstroke at the Olympics was Hungarian swimmer Krisztina Egerszegi at the age of 14 years and 40 days in Seoul in 1988, at least 20 swimmers have won Olympic swimming gold medals under the age of 16, all but one of them being female.
It’s generally accepted as largely the domain of the teenage competitor or those in their early 20s.
Napier swimmer Emma Godwin (nearest camera) training in Hastings in 2022 with Lewis Clareburt, who became a world champion in February. She hopes they’ll be teammates at the Olympic Games in Paris in July-August. Photo / Warren Buckland
But Godwin, not letting any stereotyping stand in the way, is even more unique in that since four years training in Auckland after leaving high school ended with the retirement of her coach she has based herself in Hawke’s Bay with local coach William Benson.
It could be said she loves doing it tough, but, working as an administrator with the Rotorua-based Log Transport Safety Council, when the remote-from-site vocation might have been suited to training with the others in Auckland, she believes she’s ready.
But she knows everything has to be right on the day if she’s to get the time, about two seconds under her personal best in a 50m pool. She had done 2m 7.11s in a 25m pool in 2022.
“This would be my last Olympics cycle,” says Godwin, who faced a similar situation as an Olympic hopeful in 2020, although “not with the ability” she thinks she has to now carry it off.
“Everything in training over the last couple of years has pointed towards the breakthrough now,” she says, “but not if you don’t have it all together on the day.”
Clareburt, the world 400m individual medley champion, is down for the 400m freestyle on Thursday, the 200m butterfly on Friday and the 200m individual medley on Saturday, while Fairweather will race the 200m freestyle on Wednesday, on Thursday she’ll do the 400m, in which she is the world champion, and on Saturday will do the 800m freestyle.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
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