Nz time

Erika Fairweather, shocked by her national record time in the 400m freestyle heats at the Tokyo Olympics, will be one to watch at this year's Commonwealth Games ...

Fairweather has already qualified for two events in both the Commonwealth Games and the world championships, through her Olympics performances. This time remains her lifetime best and would have qualified her for the 2016 Rio Olympics had she swam it at trials. After the Commonwealth Youth Games, Rasmussen moved to Australia for better competition. She has only competed once outside Australasia, and has never raced in a 50m pool overseas. Mya Rasmussen has been one of the country’s top medley swimmers since her mid-teens. And Mya Rasmussen has finally cracked a senior team, her first wearing the silver fern since winning gold in the 400m individual medley at the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games. That suddenly qualified Gasson in the 400m IM, a standard she met at last year’s Olympic trials. Four of our top six female swimmers will be competing at the NZ trials. Olympian Helena Gasson last represented New Zealand at a senior championships at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. While she qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics in the 100m butterfly, she was not able to qualify for Tokyo. She won’t be swimming at the New Zealand trials – in any case, she needs to lower her 400m IM time by nearly four seconds to qualify for the Commonwealth Games. Chelsey Edwards helped qualify New Zealand for the Tokyo Olympics in the 4x200m freestyle relay at the 2019 world championships in Korea. It was her first senior pinnacle competition, having previously represented New Zealand at the 2018 Junior Pan Pacific championships in Fiji. But she wasn’t able to meet the Olympic standard at last year’s trials. Dave Crampton looks at six of our leading female contenders.