Only seven women in history have swum faster than Otago teen Erika Fairweather in the 400m freestyle, after clocking the fastest time in the world this year. And she may add a longer distance to her repertoire for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Erika Fairweather was one of the world’s top junior swimmers in 2019, the year she won a world junior title in the 200m freestyle aged just 15.
Just four years on, and the Otago Olympian has recorded one of the fastest times in the world this year in the same event – in her first competition as a senior swimmer.
At the South Island championships in Invercargill over the weekend – a meet with otherwise very little fanfare - Fairweather also broke the national record in her favoured 400m freestyle.
And in doing so, she became the eighth fastest woman in world swimming history over that distance.
Her time of 4m 00.97s was the fastest 400m freestyle time in the world this year. If lowers her time by a further second again at nationals next month, she’ll join an exclusive club of just four women to ever break four minutes.
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Still a teenager, who recently turned 19, it makes her a leading senior in world swimming.
Fairweather was also a top 800m swimmer as a 15-year-old and may have won a national short course open title then, had she contested it. But it’s an event she may add to her roster for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Few top young age group swimmers in New Zealand have gone on to win medals as a senior swimmer at a pinnacle competition.
Many plateau, others stop after failing to qualify for pinnacle competitions. Some peak later in life.
Fairweather looks set to break that trend and excel as both a junior and a senior, as Commonwealth Games champion Lewis Clareburt has done.
The longer 800m freestyle could be an event Fairweather looks to target at her second Olympics after recently becoming the first Kiwi female to win a medal at a senior world short course championships in more than 10 years.
She won silver medal in the 800m in Melbourne in December, despite not swimming it at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games four months earlier, when Swimming New Zealand turned down her request to do so.
The previous day, she’d done the same in the 400m freestyle; making her the first New Zealander to win two silver medals at one world short course championship.
Ten weeks later, in Invercargill last weekend, Fairweather swam more than a second faster than her previous best time in the 400m freestyle.
She then clocked a 2023 world top five time in the 200m freestyle, of 1m 56.73s, lowering the New Zealand long course record by 0.09 seconds.
Lauren Boyle, then aged 26, set the old record in the heats of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Boyle is the only other female from New Zealand to medal in the 25m pool at a world championship in nearly 20 years.
Fairweather may be the eighth fastest 400m freestyle performer ever, but she is also the fifth fastest all-time swimmer in a textile swimsuit after polyurethane swimsuits were banned following the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
She’s now aiming to be the world’s fifth woman to swim the 400m distance in under four minutes. If she does a one second personal best at next month’s nationals in Auckland, she’ll do it.
Fairweather would probably have given a ‘yeah, right’ response if told in 2015 she would be on the cusp of breaking four minutes in the 400m freestyle four years after her world junior performance. At that point only two swimmers had done so.
The world record for 400m freestyle stands at 3m 56.40s, set by Australian 21-year-old Ariarne Titmus last May, breaking American Katie Ledecky’s six-year hold on the world's best time.
Right now, Fairweather holds 30 current national age-group records and 96 Otago age-group records, including in the 800m freestyle. She set four national age-group records in that event between the ages of 13 and 16; all remain current records. As a 13-year-old, the 800m was one of eight Otago age-group records she set in one competition; half of which she still holds.
At trials for Melbourne, held less than three weeks after Fairweather’s return from the Commonwealth Games, she chose to focus on that longer 800m event she’d earlier excelled at.
So far, it’s paid off.
Fairweather had never previously entered a championship 800m outside New Zealand. But in Melbourne, she clocked a time nearly half a minute faster than the combined time of the four swimmers who hold the Otago 4x200m freestyle relay record - and took more than 13 seconds off her entry time for trials.
The day before, she'd smashed her 400m freestyle 18-years national age-group record twice and set a 200m freestyle age-group record with her 200m split time in the final for silver. The previous best at a world short course championship in a 400m freestyle was Lauren Boyle’s bronze in 2012.
It was a stunning 24 hours.
Of Oceania swimmers, only Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion Titmus has gone quicker than 4:02.00 seconds in the 400m freestyle. Fairweather lowered her time by more than a second, which is impressive at this level.
Silver medallist Erika Fairweather (left) with Australian Lani Pallister (gold) and American Leah Smith (bronze) from the 400m freestyle final at the 2022 world short course champs.
But it’s Fairweather’s 800m freestyle that is equally drawing attention. At 15, she would have made the podium at the NZ Open championships on her best time that year. The following year she won the national short course title and has done so ever since.
While she did not swim the 800m at the Commonwealth Games, she was placed fourth and fifth at Birmingham in the 200m and 400m - the two events she also swam at the Tokyo Olympics. Only one other female swimmer outside the Australians - Canada’s Summer McIntosh - was placed higher in a freestyle final at these Commonwealth Games.
However, Fairweather’s preparation for Birmingham wasn’t as smooth as anticipated. In late June she spent a week in a hotel room in Hungary during the long course world championships after getting Covid-19.
In Hungary, her best result was sixth in the 400m freestyle - her then best result in a senior pinnacle competition after her eighth place in the final at the Tokyo Olympics.
Fairweather’s first swimming outing as a senior was also going to be her first ever open water event, the national 5km championships in Taupo in January. Three members of the 4x200m freestyle relay world’s team entered – Fairweather joined by Caitlin Deans, who was fifth in the 1500m freestyle in Melbourne, and defending champion Ruby Heath.
But Deans and Fairweather scratched on the day. Heath was placed fourth, then came second in the 10km event.
At next month’s nationals in Auckland, Fairweather will be trialling for the world championships to be held in Japan in July. The 2024 world championships in Doha are only seven months after that, and are trials for the Paris Olympics, just over four months later.
So Fairweather will be hoping for a big 16 months leading up to Paris. And she’s had a great start - despite only swimming the freestyle discipline, she is ranked 48th for 2023 in the list of the world’s top 100 swimmers issued annually by US website Swimswam.
