Yee Chun Leong
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
NATIONAL swimmer Christian Nikles is delighted to be back in competition after contesting at the recently concluded 15th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in Abu Dhabi.
The tournament was the first in over two years for Nikles since the FINA World Cup in Doha in October 2019.
He clocked a time of 24.11s in the men's 50m freestyle and managed a time of 53.83s in the 100m freestyle.
Nikles, who celebrated his 24th birthday on Sunday, was disappointed by the performance but is thankful to be competing again.
"I’m very proud and grateful to be able to travel and compete overseas against world class competitors while representing Brunei," said Nikles in a recent interview with BruSports News.
"But I’m not happy with my times but that’s just part of being an athlete, sometimes you have good days and sometimes you have bad days. It’s unfortunate those bad days happen when you need the good ones the most.
"However, it is still a step forward because there is so much to learn in terms of my race strategy, technique and execution. These factors I can pick apart and use to improve my next races," he added.
Preparations haven't been the easiest with the COVID-19 pandemic but he is looking forward to bounce back.
"Looking back at my preparation, we entered into a second lockdown period where I had no access to a training pool for almost three months and barely any racing opportunities throughout the year," said Nikles.
"This period was especially difficult as I had to resort to alternative training methods that weren’t quite applicable to swimming.
"However, we still had a very strong few weeks of proper swim training with high quality and intense training sets but it’s a shame none of that was realised for me in my races.
"I’ll need to have a look back and have a conversation with my coach about how I have been specifically prepared and how we have managed my fatigue in the days leading up to my events," he added.
Nikles is looking to a much brighter 2022 heading into the new year.
"Since Brunei has started to ease restrictions on sporting events and travel, I sincerely hope that all athletes get the opportunity to regularly compete locally and internationally," said Nikles.
"I strongly feel that there is no substitute to competing as it gives athletes the ultimate ‘practice’ in their sport.
"As an example, Michael Jordan played over a 100 games throughout the season before his game winning shot in the 1998 NBA finals against the Utah Jazz.
"The more opportunities you have to compete, the better and more consistent your performances will be when they matter the most," he added.
"Looking at next year’s swimming calendar, there are plenty of opportunities to compete internationally with plenty of major sporting events, it’s then a matter of planning and executing training cycles to peak at specific ones.
"I hope that there will be local competitions hosted before and in between those international events to better prepare the potential teams being sent.
"After a short festive break I’m excited to get back to regularly training hard with a new training plan and to break more records in the future," concluded Nikles.
