With Sullivan, who may be swimming’s unluckiest man - having been under the knife almost half a dozen times because of injury already in his burgeoning swimming career - away getting x-rays on a possible broken finger, Newton sizzled to clock 21.70 in the men’s 50 metre freestyle.
It was a personal best by 0.3 for Newton, who combines fulltime work with a post graduate university program and training at Sydney University in NSW, and was good enough to rocket the 26-year-old to third on the Australian all-time list behind Sullivan (21.46) and Brett Hawke (21.69).
Sullivan injured his finger touching the wall at the conclusion of his club’s 4x100m freestyle relay heat yesterday morning and will now miss the remainder of the meet.
Newton put together a breakthrough performance two weeks ago at the World University Games in Bangkok, finishing with the silver medal and a personal best time of 22.33 (long course).
Now he is aiming to qualify for the FINA World Short Course Championships in Manchester next April by winning his first National title here – and then the bigger picture – next year’s Telstra Australian Championships / Selection Trials for the 2008 Australian Olympic Team.
“I am really pumped for (Olympic) Trials now, coming off the swim in Thailand. I know it’s not as fast as I can go and there were some elements of the race that have room for improvement and I know I need to go faster to make the (Olympic) team,” Newton said.
“I am very focused and very motivated but I know at the same time it’s not going to be easy with everything else I’ve got going on.”
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