Lewis Clareburt will join a highly competitive medley squad under renowned coach Jolyon Finck at Melbourne's Nunawading Swimming Club. Photo: photosport
New Zealand Olympian Lewis Clareburt says medley swimmers in the Southern Hemisphere will get left behind if they don't join forces.
That's why the two-time Olympian is moving from Auckland to Melbourne as he targets a maiden medal at Los Angeles 2028.
Clareburt will join a highly competitive medley squad under renowned coach Jolyon Finck at Melbourne's Nunawading Swimming Club.
Clareburt, who won the 400m Individual Medley 2024 world title in a depleted field in Doha, has seen men's medley swimming be dominated by the likes of French sensation Leon Marchand.
Marchand trains in Texas under master coach Bob Bowman, and swept the 200 and 400 medley golds at his home Paris Olympics.
World record holder Marchand also swept the 200 and 400 world titles for a third time in Singapore this year, following his sweeps in 2022 and 2023.
Bowman, the former coach of Michael Phelps, prepared Carson Foster in his Texas University programme before the American took bronze in the 400m at Paris.
Finck was looking to develop a school of medley swimmers able to rival the best in the United States, Clareburt said.
"We've been getting beaten by this group of Americans who have all been training together, they swept the podium this year in the medley events and a few of my friends from this side of the world ... decided we would come together and create a medley-specific squad and train together and try beat these guys on the other side of the world."
Clareburt told Checkpoint he needed any edge he could get.
"There's nothing better in training than just being able to race someone and try and beat them every single day. The whole crowd being together lifts everyone up. I'm gong to make everyone faster, we're all going to work together but hopefully the goal is to steal some medals off the podium."
It would be a unique situation to train with athletes that he would ultimately want to beat at the LA Olympics, Clareburt said.
"I think it's the future of sport being able to train with some of your competitors to uplift everyone in that training group to try and race each other at the end of the day."
It wasn't possible to create that kind of environment in New Zealand, he said.
"We just don't have the same depth as we do overseas so being able to find a training partner that can match my ability in most of the aspects of my swim is quite difficult. The 400 medley is quite a unique event in that you have to be world class in all four strokes so it is quite a difficult even to be competitive in and there's not many of us that actually do it on the world stage at a world class level.
"Being an Olympic swimmer, being the top 1 percent of swimming is difficult as is and trying to attract that to New Zealand is really difficult, it's an issue for lots of sports in New Zealand."
Clareburt said his goal has always been to make an Olympic podium.
"I'm 26 now, there's only a finite amount of years I've got left in swimming so I really want to make sure I use every opportunity that I can to try and be the best, at the moment it's just not going to happen in New Zealand unfortunately."
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