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SYDNEY: Australia’s record-breaking sprinter Eamon Sullivan says
his Beijing Olympic rivals will be “shaking in their boots”
after sensational back-to-back swims in the 50 meters freestyle at
the national trials.
Sullivan smashed the world 50m record for the
second time in as many days with his 21.28 seconds win in the final
of the event here on Friday.
He has developed an intense rivalry with
Frenchman Alain Bernard over the last week as the pair have set and
re-set world records in the 50m and 100m sprints, setting up a
mouth-watering clash in the Beijing pool in August.
The 22-year-old Aussie, asked what his rivals
around the world would be thinking now, said: “Hopefully,
they’ll be shaking in their boots.
“I guess it just lets them know how fast I am
swimming and what they will have to do at Olympics to try and beat
me.”
Sullivan and Bernard’s techniques vary
greatly, with the lighter Sullivan skimming across the top of the
water compared with the Frenchman’s raw, churning power and faster
stroke-rate.
“He just sits on top of that water and he is
not ploughing through that water, it is like a hovercraft on top of
the water [there is] a lot less resistance for him,” Sullivan’s
coach Grant Stoelwinder said Saturday of his man.
“I think he is revolutionary, his technique,
and I have noticed some of the other guys in the field have started
rounding their arms over on their recovery and trying to get that
continuous action a lot more.
“It is like a swing—imagine a windmill—it
is just continuous, the arms working in continuous motion.”
Bernard, who has a bigger physique than
Sullivan, blasts the water out of the way compared to the smoother
Sullivan, Stoelwinder said.
“He is raw power and he obviously has some
technique as well, his power is like a wind-up clock, he winds up
and he just unleashes,” he said of Sullivan’s rival.
“So what Eamon is doing underneath the water
is extraordinary.”
-- AFP
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