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Corbett on a mission to compete at next year’s Tokyo Games

aquatics13 August 2019 09:49| © SuperSport
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Kaylene Corbett © Gallo Images

There is a real chance of the Tuks swimmer, Kaylene Corbett, winning gold maybe even three medals in the breaststroke events during the African Games starting in Rabat, Morocco from next week.

But medals are the last thing she will be thinking about when she dives into the pool. Her only goal will be to swim a time faster than the Olympic A qualification standard in the 200m-breaststroke and to see how close she can get doing so in the 100m-breaststroke.

Corbett has during the recent World Student Games, and World Championships managed to qualify on three occasions for next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo. She, however, is not going to leave anything to chance.

Getting to represent South Africa at the Olympic Games has been her dream ever since she can remember. Corbett remembers telling her mom when she was only eight that she is one day going to swim at the Games.

Judging by the way she has kept on improving her personal best time over the last 12 months it is a near done deal that she will do so. She started the season with her own best time in the 200m-breaststroke being 2:27.90. It is now 2:24.18. An improvement of more than three seconds. The Olympic qualifying standard is 2:25.52.

What is remarkable is that the plan was not for her to be so fast yet. Rocco Meiring (Tuks's swimming head coach) explained that he thought she will only qualify for the Olympics during next year's South African Championships in April.

"I only really started to work with Kaylene in August last year. One of the problems in the past was that Kaylene did focus a lot on endurance during her training. It is something that needed to be rectified. Apart from her endurance, we also focussed on improving her 'clean speed'."

Meiring credits Corbett qualifying for the 200m-breaststroke final at the World Championships to her being able to step up to the plate when it matters.

"The only thing I did was to give her a bit of guidance as to how much faster she needs to swim the first 100 metres. The rest was up to her, and she made it all about guts and passion."

Corbett has no hesitation in saying she considers swimming the same final as Tatjana Schoenmaker as an absolute highlight.

"It boiled down to the two of us against the world. We had quite a bit of fun before the race, having our own personal jokes. It helped to calm our nerves. Afterwards, when we realised the enormity of what we had achieved was incredible. Tatjana being the first South African female swimmer to win a medal at 'Worlds' and myself being the eighth-best in the world. Both of us shed tears of joy."

Schoenmaker is not competing at the African Games.

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