Leigh Nugent expresses happiness over performance of Australian swimmers at the World Championships
Australia Swimming head coach, Leigh Nugent, expressed happiness over the efforts of Australian contestants at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai, China. Nugent articulated that he is pleased with the performance of Australian swimmers, which he considers
much better than the effort put up by the team at the 2009 Rome World Championships.
The Australian squad captured a total of 13 medals in all swimming events, which included two gold medals in 100m freestyle by James Magnussen and the 4*100m freestyle relay team title. Other prominent efforts included silver medals of Leisel Jones in Women’s
100m breast-stroke, Alicia Coutts in Women’s 100m butterfly and Matthew Targett in Men’s 50m butterfly. Bronze finishers included Geoff Huegill in the Men’s 50m butterfly and Stephanie Rice in Women’s 400m Individual Medley (IM).
Though the Australian team at the 2009 Rome world titles clinched 16 medals at the championship and ranked fourth on the overall points table, Nugent believes that the Shanghai performance was a better one.
While expressing his views about the comparison of two recent world championships, Nugent said, “Where we're positioned at the minute is an encouraging place to be. We're positioned a bit better than any other nation (behind the US) apart from China as far
as they've succeeded in more gold medals than us. For us I think this is a much better performances than what we had in 2009 even though in 2009 there were three gold medals.”
Nugent was delighted with the first world title winning effort of Magnussen and the bronze clinching stride of Rice, who pocketed her first medal after an intensive knee surgery.
He also stressed that Swimming Australia is aiming high towards the upcoming 2012 London Olympic Games and the extensive training camp for Australian swimmers will start by the end of this month. Nugent said that there is a need for a lot of improvement
and hopefully a whole year’s extensive workout will improve the standing of the Australian team at the 2012 London event.
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