Sweetenham set on tough course

A World Championships usually marks the end of a hard season and the time to take a break before the training cycles begin again in preparation for the next major championships a year later.

But, when the Australian Bill Sweetenham arrived on these shores last November, this was one of the first attitudes Britain's performance director changed with his: "No weddings and no bloody funerals; the only day you get off is Christmas day until Athens in 2004." True to his word, no sooner had the British swimmers finished counting their seven medals from the World Championships in Fukuoka than they were on a plane to Perth to compete in the Australian National Short-Course Championships.

The successes continued when Barnet Copthall's Sarah Price set a world record in the 200 metres backstroke. But it was not just Price who carried her form from Japan to Perth; Zoe Baker in the 50m breaststroke, Alison Sheppard in the 50m freestyle, Rebecca Cooke in the 1500m freestyle and Graeme Smith, in the 800m and 1500m freestyle, all excelled.

And still they race on. When the team landed in Britain yesterday afternoon, they were taken directly to Norwich for the British Short-Course Championships, which begin today and are doubling as the trials for the European Short-Course Championships, to be held in Antwerp in December.

With a total of one world, four European, 11 Commonwealth and 20 British records in the last two weeks, the team has a momentum that Sweetenham wants to continue. Joining the World Championships team in Norwich will be James Hickman and Steve Parry, who failed to make the qualifying times for Fukuoka.

With his phenomenal turns, Hickman is a specialist in the 25m pool, holding a total of seven individual British records. He is the world short-course record holder in the 200m butterfly and triple world short-course champion.

Opening the championships today will be Mark Foster, James Hickman, Zoe Baker, Karen Pickering, Sarah Price and Rebecca Cooke.