Clareburt follows in famous footsteps

Call it serendipitous if you will, as Lewis Clareburt prepares to plunge into the Tokyo Aquatics Centre pool for the biggest 24 hours of his career.

Exactly 25 years ago – July 23, 1996 – our greatest swimmer Danyon Loader touched the wall in Atlanta to complete the 200m and 400m freestyle golden Olympic double.

Clareburt wasn’t even born then, and it remains New Zealand’s most recent Olympic swimming medal, of any hue.

Moss Burmester went close in Beijing in 2008, launching off the blocks to lead the great Michael Phelps before fading late to fourth in the men’s 200m butterfly final. Four years later in London, Lauren Boyle finished one spot off the podium in the women’s 800m freestyle before illness ruined her Rio campaign when hopes were high.

Fast forward to Clareburt, just turned 22, who contests heat three of the men’s 400m individual medley at 10.13pm tonight as a genuine medal hope. In fact, the only realistic podium chance of this swim squad of seven which features the youngest of New Zealand’s 211 athletes:

17-year-old Kavanagh College (Dunedin) student Erika Fairweather.

It’s four years since Clareburt shot to prominence out of Wellington’s Freyberg Pool and the Capital Swim Club, when he equalled Loader’s 16-and-over 200m freestyle record which had stood for nearly 25 years. ‘‘I don’t think it adds more pressure being named under Danyon Loader. I think it’s pretty cool,’’ Clareburt said at the time.

Clareburt’s coach, Irishman Gary Hollywood, still works with the late Duncan Laing’s coaching notes, which he

was gifted a year after Loader’s triumph.

Hollywood set Clareburt some bold targets early on: Olympic gold and the 400m IM world record. ‘‘The bigger the stage, the better he swims.’’

At the 2018 Commonwealth Games he lobbed for bronze in the 400m IM; a year later he announced himself to a wider audience when collecting bronze in his top event at the world championships.

Then in April, with his debut Olympics postponed one year by Covid19, Clareburt smashed his own national 400m IM record in a 4min 09.87sec swim

in Auckland.

Said Clareburt on arrival in Tokyo, where the usual cacophony will be replaced by eerie silence amid empty stands: ‘‘I’m in the best headspace I’ve ever been. I’m ready to get angry, bust it out and go really fast.’’

Japan’s Daiya Seto, the 2019 world champion, is the gold medal favourite and has publicly targeted Phelps’ world record of a sizzling 4:03.84 set in Beijing.

First, he’ll need to be in the eight fastest from the four 400m IM heats to qualify for the final, scheduled for 1.30pm

tomorrow (NZT).

‘‘If I can get myself into the final anything is possible. A medal could definitely be on the table depending on how everyone else looks,’’ Clareburt said.

Clareburt and New Plymouth’s Zac Reid (400m freestyle) kick things off for New Zealand on the first night of heats.

Fairweather lines up in three events including the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay which New Zealand qualified for at the 2019 worlds. Among her team-mates are US college-based Ali Galyer and Eve Thomas.