Sophia Batchelor had no intention of swimming taking over her life when she decided to take a few lessons five years ago. At the tender age of 11 and a pupil at St Andrew's College, she swam a lap at her school sports. Most kids would leap in and thrash away until they completed the length. Not Batchelor. She decided to do the race justice, and took lessons from a family friend, former New Zealand swimming coach and representative Brett Naylor, at the AquaGym club. Batchelor won her race and stayed on in a junior squad at the club. That swift rise is largely down to one trait. Competitiveness. It shows in whatever Batchelor does. Hockey was her first sporting love. She still watches friends play and occasionally will take the field, and tells her coach, Leanne Speechley, that the time she spent on the field was her aerobic training. But she has few other diversions. At 16 she is a phenomenally focused young athlete. Talking about the lap that started her swimming career Batchelor said: "I'm quite competitive. I didn't just want to finish the lap. I wanted to win the lap." In her first 18 months in the junior squad at AquaGym, there was nothing to indicate what was to come: a flurry of national and Canterbury records and a place on the New Zealand team for the world championships. However, at 13, the competitive spirit and the benefits of training began to unfold. In September 2008, she broke her first New Zealand record the girls 13 years 50m butterfly. In the ensuing two years and 10 months, she has broken another 74, the last two national open records. Throw in 149 Canterbury records 16 of them open marks - and you get an idea of Batchelor's exceptional talent. The last five months, however, have been a challenge. All was advancing smoothly over the summer. Her training for the New Zealand championships in April was on target. The meeting in Auckland was the only opportunity for New Zealand swimmers to qualify for the world championships. But on February 22 everything changed. QEII and AquaGym, the two pools where Batchelor and her AquaGym team-mates trained, were closed by the earthquake and have not reopened. It is unlikely QEII will ever open again. For the past five months it has been swimming's equivalent of musical chairs for Batchelor and Speechley. Initially, the squad travelled to Rangiora to train and since then have trained at the Wharenui, Pioneer and Christ's College pools, often at unsociable times, because it was the only pool time they could get. There was also a spell in Invercargill last month, when she was able to stay with a friend and train in a long-course pool for two weeks. "You need to be able to train in a long-course pool if you are going to be racing long-course. It is too hard switching from short-course training to long-course racing," Batchelor said. But inconvenient times and longer travel times have not phased Batchelor. At the national championships, she continued in record-breaking mode, winning the women's 100m butterfly and setting a New Zealand open record of 59.54sec, becoming the first New Zealand woman to break a minute for the distance. The time also sealed Batchelor's place on the world championships team. Two weeks later, at the Australian age-group championships, she lowered the time to 59.48sec. Batchelor has moved from age-group competition to open ranks so quickly she has had little opportunity to learn the art of racing. She narrowly missed a place on the Commonwealth Games team last year, and her first selection on a national open team was at the Oceania championships in Samoa last year. But both New Zealand and Australia supplied second-tier teams. Last December, she was New Zealand's sole representative at the world short-course championships in Dubai, but it was not a happy time for Batchelor. Exams before she left interrupted her training and she was sick in Dubai. To get more racing against some of the best before the worlds, Batchelor and Speechley travelled to Europe last month for the annual Mare Nostrum series in Barcelona, Canet and Monaco, events that attract the best swimmers from Europe. "London [Olympics] is next year and I'm still not experienced. I haven't been exposed to the highest level of competition yet, so I have to keep learning," Batchelor said. "You can come to the pool nine times a week but the best training for racing is racing.," she said. "I've recently gone through a stroke change, too, so I have to put that into play. The world championships will be the first time I have used it." Batchelor will have a settled 10 days to complete her training for the world championships. The New Zealand squad has a camp in Hong Kong before travelling to Shanghai. - The Press http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/5269019/Sophia-Batchelor-in-shape-for-world-stage
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