Champion Fairweather goes for a medal three-peat
Should she place on the podium in the 400m freestyle on July 27, she, at just 21, will become the first Aquablack to win a medal at three different World Aquatics long course championships after her efforts in 2023 and 2024. She may have to be on top form even to be just outside the medals as she was at Paris.
But it is the podium that Fairweather and her new coach Graham Hill will be aiming for. Just one other female -Lauren Boyle – has stood on any level of a world championship swimming podium for New Zealand. But she was six foot and aged 25 when she got her first medal in 2013. Fairweather was a teenager when she won her first. Now she is off to her sixth world championships. Her first was as a 15-year-old when she won the 200m freestyle at the 2019 World Junior championships.
Fairweather switched to Hill in Auckland from Otago earlier this year after her previous coach Lars Humer retired from international coaching. Hill, whose swimmers have won six Olympic medals across four Olympic Games, arrived from South Africa where he was the head coach of the South African swim team. As Swimming New Zealand's head Olympic coach, he wants medals from Aquablacks now. Hill likes winning medals.
Australian Ariarne Titmus, unbeaten in the 400m freestyle since 2018, is taking a break from competitive swimming. This may not even make a podium placing easier for Fairweather as competition this year is faster than any Olympic year. Without Titmus at Paris, Fairweather would have been New Zealand's first female Olympic swimming medallist since 1952.
It's rare for a Kiwi to come away from a long course world swimming championship with a medal. Since Danyon Loader won three medals at Rome in 1994, only three have. Indeed, it is rare for a Kiwi to compete in an individual final; just four have since 2015.
While New Zealand got its first 4x200m women's freestyle relay in an Olympic final at Paris, there will not be a Singapore repeat; New Zealand is not entering one, preferring to focus on Fairweather's 800m event the following day. At last year's worlds, Fairweather won an 800m bronze medal and her relay the day before was placed fourth.
Fairweather deserves to rub shoulders with her main rivals, former world record holder Katie Ledecky of the US and the hot favourite and current world record holder, 18-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh, the world's best athlete in a swim cap.
At the 2023 world championships, in beating McIntosh, Fairweather shared a podium with Ledecky and Titmus when she became the world's fifth woman to ever break four minutes in the 400m freestyle.
In less than a year, things have changed. At Paris last year, Fairweather was competing against the best 400m freestyle swimmers of all time.
But they have just got faster as they use this year as a launching pad for the 2028 Olympics.
Ledecky currently holds four world records. McIntosh holds six, three of which were set in one competition last month, the first swimmer to do that since Michael Phelps in 2008.
Australian Lani Pallister and Tokyo Olympic medallist Li Bingjie from China added their names to that exclusive sub four-minute group, with US teenage swimmer Claire Weinstein just 0.05 seconds shy. Pallister is ranked second this year in the 25m pool.
Fairweather looks for her time at the Swimming NZ Champs. Photo: David Rowland/www.bwmedia.co.nz and Swimming NZ
Before Paris, it was Fairweather who was setting lifetime bests when others were not, so she will be looking for a competitive time again this month. Her last lifetime best across her top events (3:59.44 seconds) was at trials for Paris, but her best this season is 4:03.06 seconds. Hill will be hoping Fairweather hits her straps for a big season best to touch the wall ahead of some of the top four seeds in Singapore.
It's unlikely she will successfully defend her title unless she improves on her season best by at least eight seconds. But if she clocks a lifetime best, as she has done at each of the past two world championships, she could be on the podium with Ledecky and McIntosh unless Pallister shuts her out. Ledecky was just 0.26 seconds (or about 40 centimetres) ahead of Fairweather at Paris.
It's not much.
Fairweather has indicated she wants to compete at her third Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, where she will still only be 24. As times get quicker and a couple more like Weinstein join the sub-four club, it may take a sub four-minute swim to make a 400m freestyle Olympic final, with Ledecky at her home Olympics and Titmus back for her final Olympics, to attempt a three-peat.
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