Tait focused on 200m backstroke after 100m 'warm-up'

Published on Monday 11 August 2008 23:53

WITH a new life beckoning and having indicated that it is unlikely to include competitive swimming, Gregor Tait is striving to make the most of his last- ever Olympics, but now all hopes of a final flourish rests on the 200 metres backstroke.

The 29-year-old City of Edinburgh swimmer failed to make the final of the 100m backstroke, coming in sixth, in a speedy semi-final which saw Arkady Vyatchanin, of Russia, break the Olympic record. Although that mark was bettered again minutes later by Australia's Hayden Stoeckel in the second semi-final, it was a pace the Scot could not contend with.

But he was far from disillusioned by his performance, claiming that he hadn't honestly expected to make the final. "It was a fast time and realistically I was only in there for experience. It isn't my main event and I swam faster than I did on Sunday so I don't really have any complaints."

It wasn't his Olympic swansong, though. That will come in the 200m backstroke, which gets underway tomorrow. It is the event where he finished seventh in Athens four years ago before taking gold at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006.

But the absence of Americans helped that quest. Ranked sixth-fastest in the world over 200m at the moment, the top two in the world are both USA swimmers – Aaron Peirsol and Ryan Lochte – with Peirsol in particular imperious, having already bettered Tait's personal best on seven occasions this year.

But Tait insists it is all about performances on the day, not times in the record books.

"Luckily I had this event to get me going. This is what I call my 'fun' event. It's a warm-up for the main one, so I'm actually really happy with how it went. Now I will have some rest before I start again, so hopefully the 200m will be better.

"Again, I've not got anything to lose, it's the same as this, nobody expects a lot of us (British swimmers] to do that well so we just go in, try to get through the heats, get through the semis and then who knows."

Meanwhile, Kirsty Balfour and her British team-mate Kate Haywood missed out on a place in the final of the 100m breaststroke. Balfour was more than a second-and-a-half outside her personal best and lagged in last in her semi-final.

The City of Edinburgh swimmer will return to the pool for the longer distance later this week.