Frustrated in the pool last year, top Kiwi medley swimmer Mya Rasmussen sought a new start in Brisbane - and now she's off to her first Commonwealth Games.
Medley swimmer Mya Rasmussen always wanted to compete at the Commonwealth Games and was well on track to do so as a young teen.
But after winning a gold medal in the 400m individual medley at the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games in the Bahamas, in a lifetime best that would have qualified her for the previous year’s Rio Olympics, she plateaued.
In her late teens, she was struggling to find the form that would get her into the top 16 at a world juniors competition, let alone secure selection to her first senior team.
Even at age 15, while she was a student at Palmerston North Girls' High, Rasmussen was New Zealand’s top ranked swimmer in both 400m IM and 200m IM.
In 2018, she moved from Feilding to Australia’s Sunshine Coast in search of better times, better competition, and to train with some of Australia’s top swimmers such as Kaylee McKeown, a top 400m IM swimmer who currently holds a world backstroke record.
Yet for the following two years, Rasmussen was consistently swimming times slower than she did when she was 14 – not even 10 seconds close to her personal best - and felt like giving up altogether.
“Swimming was just not feeling the same for me – I hadn’t been anywhere near my times, and I was really struggling mentally to get back to motivate myself,” she says.
She questioned why she was still in the sport.
“I was training so hard, but not getting the results that I felt like I deserved or had worked for. Even last year was quite rough,” the 21-year-old says.
Then late last year, Rasmussen made another move – this time for a change in coaching.
She wanted to work with coach Tim Lane at Somerville House, a squad based at a girl’s boarding school in South Brisbane. Rasmussen has settled in there, and has found a part-time job at Nike.
The move has paid dividends.
“I took a break and focused on 200m IM and 200m butterfly. Then I came back and did a four minutes 48 seconds time in the 400m IM and thought, ‘Oh I can actually still do a decent time’, which was like a real confidence boost for me,” Rasmussen says.
In January, she clocked 4m 42.33s in the 400m IM at the New South Wales championships - just shy of her lifetime best. It was her first time under 4m 46.00s since her Commonwealth Youth Games title; and was clocked just a few months after her move to Brisbane.
While that clipped her ticket to this week’s world championships in Budapest (she swims the 400m IM on the final day on Saturday), her time fell nearly four seconds short of the tougher Commonwealth Games standard.
But in April, Swimming New Zealand informed Rasmussen her New South Wales time was good enough to be selected for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, as a swimmer who could potentially be placed in the top six in the event.
She will also swim the 200m IM and the 200m breaststroke in Birmingham next month, five years after winning medals in the same three events at the Commonwealth Youth Games.
“I’m shocked I got there after all this time,” Rasmussen says, recalling hearing the news of her Games selection. “I was in the car on the way to training and I just started crying – I was so excited.
“I hadn’t even got a time to make the long list, so I had to do all that long list paperwork to be nominated. I didn’t have a clue whether they were going to select me. I also got nominated last time – but didn’t get selected, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
“I’m glad that I stuck with it and finally got there in the end. It’s been such a long time – it’s a huge relief.”
Rasmussen says had she not moved to Brisbane, she would not be off to the Commonwealth Games.
“The facilities, the coaching and the training partners are so much better over here. Tim is an amazing coach, he’s just so organised and onto it. I could not find a more perfect match in a coach,” she says.
“We think very similarly, and he just understands what I’ve been through and makes it clear what I need to do, which makes it easier for me.”
Even a world championships qualification time was not initially part of the plan so early. Rasmussen had not been closer than four seconds to the qualifying standard within the previous five years.
“I was going to come home [to New Zealand] and attempt it, or do it at the Australian trials, but Aussie trials got moved to May, a month after our qualifying period ended,” Rasmussen says.
A last-minute decision was made with Lane to have a crack at the world championship qualifying standard at the New South Wales champs to avoid having to make a last-ditch attempt at the New Zealand trials in April, should the borders be open.
“I wasn’t too sure how I’d go,” Rasmussen recalls. “I had five days to prepare to try and go under this qualifying time. It was quite daunting, but it was pretty awesome to get under the time.”
Rasmussen holds multiple national age group records and more than 50 Manawatu records. Yet she is the only swimmer in the Commonwealth Games team without a national open title.
That’s because as a teenager, Rasmussen chose to bypass most senior national events, getting her top times at the national age grade championships. Many of them were quicker than the winners of senior nationals.
Even as a 13-year-old, she broke five minutes in the 400m IM, in a time that would have got a silver medal at this year’s New Zealand championships.
However, Rasmussen’s initial times in Australia during her slump were pretty good by New Zealand standards. Since 2013 only two New Zealand swimmers have gone quicker than 4m 51.00s in the 400m IM at a national open competition.
One is 2016 Olympian Helena Gasson, who, in April qualified in the 200m IM for both Birmingham and Budapest (which is why Rasmussen isn't permitted to swim the 200 IM at the world champs).
Teenager Gina McCarthy also met the development qualifying standard for Budapest and could have been selected had Rasmussen not got the A standard.
Mya Rasmussen training in Slovakia last week before the world championships.
But Rasmussen has high goals. Her Olympic goal is to lower her times to qualify for Paris in 2024, which has the same 400m IM qualifying standard as the one she missed for Birmingham.
She believes she can do it.
“I’m definitely ready to go faster now,” she says. “Coming over here and going up against people that are just going to kick my arse has been really important.
“If I can drop below 4:40 at the Commonwealth Games, that would be great. Tim said I’m more than capable of dropping to 4:38.”
Should Rasmussen do that, she will not only be in the hunt for a place in Paris, but she’ll hold her first New Zealand Open record, one that has that has stood since 2007.
For now, she has a busy international schedule of four pinnacle competitions in 13 months, if she wants to compete at the world short course championships in Melbourne in December, and next year’s world championships to be held in Japan in July.
* Erika Fairweather has finished sixth in the 400m freestyle on the opening day of the world championships in Budapest yesterday, holding on to her sixth ranking. Eve Thomas finished 13th in the same event. (Lewis Clareburt finished just outside the medals in the men's 400m IM).
And at the world Para swimming championships, Nikita Howarth won silver in the 100m breaststroke SB7, and was seventh in the 100m backstroke S7. Gaby Smith smashed personal best times to make her first three world champs finals, with a fifth and two sixth placings, while Lili-Fox Mason also swam a personal best to finish seventh in the final of the 400m freestyle S10. Cameron Leslie was NZ's star of the world meet, winning a gold and three silvers.
