Dubai: UAE-based swimmer Velimir Stjepanovic qualified to the Rio 2016 Olympics with an A-standard time in the 400-metre freestyle at the Eindhoven Swim Cup in Holland this week.
The 21-year-old Serbian set a time of 3:48.85 to finish second and move into eighth in the world, but he fell short of A-standard times in the 200-metre freestyle and 200-metre butterfly.
“Obviously, I’m happy to have got the 400-metre freestyle, but it was a tough couple of days,” the double European champion told Gulf News. “Actually I had the 200-metre freestyle and 200-metre butterfly before the 400-metre freestyle and got B-Class, but I wasn’t too far off.
“We didn’t rest fully, which is something we’ll look into in the future. What we had done was enough to get the qualifying time, but we just underestimated how tired my body was, I think to be able to psychologically stay up above and come out with an A-Cut on 400-metre freestyle is good and shows I didn’t falter, at least something went well and I got my A-Class, so I’m really happy about that.”
The Hamilton Aquatics member said there would be plenty of opportunity to reach A-Class timings in the 200-metre freestyle and 200-metre butterfly in the future and slated the Fina World Championships in Kazan, Russia, from July 29 to August 9, as the next available date to try again.
“There are lot of competitions within the next year and a bit,” he added. “Obviously I wanted to try and get them now so that I didn’t have to think about it. Because I’m qualified to the 400-metre freestyle I can actually enter the 200-metre freestyle and 200-metre butterfly [at the Olympics] because I’m the fastest in Serbia for those two events, but I’d still like to get the cut for those. Probably Kazan is the next best opportunity where I’ll be rested enough to get those times.”
Stjepanovic added that fatigue wouldn’t be as big a concern in Kazan. “It was kind of a different taper [gradient of intensity] in Eindhoven, it wasn’t a full taper. We won’t be doing that in Kazan, there will be a full rest and I know we know what to do for a full rest event, it’s the same thing we’ve been doing for the past five or six years.”
Having finished sixth in the 200-metre butterfly final at the London 2012 Olympics, Stjepanovic added he was looking to go one better in Rio.
“I don’t really want to say what I hope to achieve there [in Rio],” he said. “I have an idea about what I want to do, it’s just a case of staying healthy training hard and then when the time comes when we are closer to the moment we’ll see, I’m preparing to do really well and that’s my goal, so we’ll see.”
