Norway’s Aleksander Hetland just after his Istanbul 2009 LEN European Short Course Championships win in the men’s 50 meter breaststroke. Hetland’s time was 26.19, ahead of Italy’s Alessandro Terrin in 26.24 and Serbia’s Caba Siladji in 26.31. Tongue-in-cheek guy is Slovenia’s Matjaz Markic, defending champion from Rijeka 2008, here 5th in 26.42.
Hetland by the way wrote a nice piece on here on his website earlier this week, on “Swimming Success and the 20-mile March’, about how even sprinters like him have to put in a consistent effort.
Everybody can train well or even world class when they’re at their best, but what makes some swimmers world class is that they almost always train at a world class level and they do this over a sufficient amount of time until they actually become world class! I believe that it is the bottom end of the spectrum where the greatest improvement potential lies for 99% of swimmers. Never missing practice (two alarms etc), never being sick (nutrition, recovery, sleep etc) never losing focus in a workout is what’s really going to make you a great swimmer, not doing some extra 50’ies from the blocks when you occasionally feel great in practice.
