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Rapid growth leads to New Zealand team call up
Jack Malcolm
A swimmer and his coach are hard at work putting on the final touches as they prepare to travel to France to race later this month.
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Finn Russ is in the pool every day as he gears up for the Virtus Global Games, training upwards of nine times a week.
Alongside coach Glen Findlay, who has been selected as one of the team’s coaches, the pair have been hard at work tinkering away before the big tournament in Vichy, France.
While the team was announced just last week, Finn’s times made him a shoo-in for a spot in the New Zealand team.
“We’ve known for a while. . . the qualification standards came out for the Global Games, Finn met those and he’s improved on them since then,” says Glen.
Glen has worked with Finn for the past three years and says he was relatively new to swimming when he started in 2020.
“He’s made phenomenal progress in such a short amount of time. .
. four-and-a-half years ago, Finn was still learning how to swim.
“To go from learning how to swim 25 metres properly to swimming world-class times is something quite unique.”
He says there’s still a long runway of improvement for Finn, as they’ve just started incorporating gym work into their training.
“Last time he was at a national standard, he’s very quickly gone to top 3 (in the country) in multiple different events.
“He’s got a really natural connection to the water, and he’s a phenomenal competitor.”
Having coached eight different national teams over the years, Glen says this is the first time he’s been selected to coach a neuro-divergent team on the world stage.
“The process is the same for where each athlete is at. Their ability to develop skills and physical fitness is the same, it’s just changing up the communication.”
Having been in the middle of 16