Samoa’s first entry at the 16th World Championships, in Kazan, was 17-year-old Brandon Schuster.
His first event was the 400m freestyle.
In this event, he has knocked an incredible 26 seconds off his time from just before the 2013 World Championships, in Barcelona, to this year’s Pacific Games, in early July 2015. His time of 4:10.15 at the Pacific Games in Port Moresby set a national record which today he was determined to beat.
Schuster started strongly completing the first 50m in 3rd place in 28.56 seconds. He went on to complete the eight lengths in 4 minutes 15.30 seconds. However, when reflecting on the race he let out a sigh of exhaustion before admitting “it wasn’t the race I thought I was going to swim but it was a good race”. He carefully pinpointed an area for development next time around, with his fast start slightly undoing his later efforts;
“I think I went a little too fast in the first 100m and it was hard for me to catch up”. He then went on to reveal that his “150m turn” let him down.
There’s little recovery time for Brandon Schuster as he is back in the pool again tomorrow for the 200m Freestyle. However, having attended World Championships since Istanbul in 2012 he’s experienced in dealing with the schedules of longer distance swimming.
Even as he was completing his post race interview, Brandon’s determination to continue his fine progress was still uppermost in his mind in highlighting his breathing and turns as the main focus. Another indication of the commitment to keep lowering his times - as one of the youngest competitors in the 68 man race, time is certainly on his side.