No place like home for O'Connor

SINCE Adrian O'Connor was informed last week of his selection among the Irish swimmers to compete in the Atlanta Olympics, his reaction has been one of great relief.

"The decision to pick me came much sooner than I had thought I was expecting it next month after the British super finals in Sheffield, that all."

His plan of campaign for the next couple of months, supervised by coach Ger Doyle, has suddenly changed direction from desperately searching for new personal bests, likely to yield so called A grade qualifying marks, to applying, himself to specific preparation prior to tapering.

He is likely to be training alone and tapering in a short course indoor pool in New Ross. Going through the final stages of preparation at home will be a personal choice. O'Connor is one of those backstroke competitors who prefers training under a roof rather than the sky, even though the sky will be the roof for all backstroke competitors in Atlanta.

He also considers the short course pool good for tapering and more conducive to speed work. Long course training, possibly in Fort Lauderdale, will probably be the plan over the coming weeks.

Olympic team mates Michelle Smith, Marion Madine and Earl McCarthy will also train separately but as competition approaches, they are more likely to continue to opt for the more standard facilities of an outdoor 50 metre pool in warm climates.

Perhaps the first indication of O'Connor's potential surfaced in Leeds amid an assembly of world class future talent in 1980 when he reached a backstroke final of the European Junior championships. Since then he has consistently rewritten national backstroke records, impressing on the OCI that he was Olympic material in Vienna last week.

Missing out for Barcelona was a huge disappointment. "The problem then was that it was all politics as far as I can remember. There was, no set qualifying times and nobody knew how they were going to be selected. We had made the initial qualifying times and we assumed that we deserved to go but that's very much history now" he says.