With the lack of depth South Africa had no intention or hope of qualifying a 4x100m medley relay team for the Rio Olympic Games until Christopher Reid’s sizzling record-breaking swim in the 100m backstroke on Monday.
The 20-year-old announced himself in style on the second day of the SA Swimming Championships and Olympic trials shattering Gerhard Zandberg’s eight-year-old record with a time of 53.12 seconds.
Reid booked his ticket to the Rio Games slashing 0.63 seconds off the previous record posting the fifth fastest time in the event this year.
With only Olympic gold medallists Chad le Clos in the butterfly and Cameron van der Burgh in the breaststroke, South Africa would fight a losing battle without two world-class freestyle and backstroke swimmers to complete the relay.
Reid has emerged as the answer in the backstroke which is the opening leg while a freestyle swimmer still needs to put up his hand.
National swimming coach Graham Hill said Reid’s stellar performance left him with a pleasant headache as they scrambled to include a medley relay time trial to qualify a team.
“I’m just trying to work out how we are going to do it because we don’t have the 100m free until the end of the week,” Hill said.
“This will be a major carrot for the 100m free guys with the final on Thursday night, so whoever wins will swim the time trials in the medley relay at the end.”
Not a single freestyle swimmer – with the exception of Le Clos – has managed to get close the Olympic qualifying time.
“We’ve got three world-class guys, now we just need to find a freestyler but we will see,” Hill said.
“With those three times (Reid, Le Clos, and Van der Burgh), just to qualify 49, 49.5 seconds (freestyle leg) on the relay would be good enough for us to qualify,” Hill said.
“But we would then need the freestyler to get his time down to 48.7 to be competitive for a medal.”
In the build-up to the championships, Reid signaled that he would be swimming fast times when he dipped below the qualifying mark three weeks ago with a time of 54.13 seconds in Atlanta.
On Monday evening Reid again clocked a time faster than the previous record when he touched the wall in a time of 53.23 in his semi-final.
Van der Burgh, who secured his spot to his third Olympic Games with a time of 59.66, was delighted about the prospect of featuring in a medley relay team.
“It is really exciting, we’ve always been slacking in the backstroke, being a breaststroker diving in two seconds behind everyone else is quite demotivating but being there with the rest of the guys we just need a 100m freestyler to step up to the plate,” Van der Burgh said.
“If we can give someone a lead, I’m not saying we will go for a gold but someone with maybe a taste for silver or bronze, we can try and bring it home.”
Reid said he would love to swim in a relay at the Games while his national record time would also be good enough to get into a final.
“We’ve got the fastest middle 200m in the world with Chad and Cameron, so if I pull my weight in the backstroke, and a freestyler to make the step up, we might just be a medal contender in Rio,” Reid said.
Le Clos was equally excited about adding the possibility of adding the medley relay to his repertoire in Rio.
“We want to finish the week on a high. That medley relay is on like a scone,” Le Clos said.
“We are all pretty close, the times are there. Nationals are difficult, it is a different atmosphere, it is about getting the results. On Saturday, I think we can all be a second quicker. We have all made the team, so there is a lot less pressure.” - Independent Media