South Africa's Chad le Clos might currently be the world's premier butterflier, and reinforced his standing by winning the Commonwealth Games gold in the 200 metre butterfly on Saturday night, but silver medallist Grant Irvine knows that he would never be allowed to copy his style.
In fact, the unheralded Irvine, who trains with the Brisbane-based squad of Michael Bohl, said any attempt to do so would probably result in "little bit of a flogging" from his coach.
While most swimmers, including Irvine, hold to the line that they concentrate on their own races, Le Clos is not shy about looking around at his competitors during the race and he again threw a number of looks in Irvine's direction after the Australian made the early running and held the lead through 150 metres.
However, Irvine, swimming in the far outside lane one said he did not feel the defending champion's glare.
"That's not how I swim. I've obviously seen how he swims and he loves having a good look under water but I was over in lane one so I wasn't really concentrating on him," Irvine said.
"I was on the sidelines and watched the (world titles) finals last year and you can see it obviously works for him. He gets confidence from looking at people and digging that little bit deeper."
The unheralded Irvine followed Bohl's instructions perfectly but Le Clos was too powerful over the final lap, and swam over the top to win in 1:55.07. Irvine finished second in 1:56.34 ahead of Sebastien Rousseau (1:56.43) with Australian teammate Daniel Tranter sixth in 1:57.31.
"Pretty much the instructions from Bohly was just see how much you got at the start and trust how much work we've done and try and hold on at the end," Irvine said.
"Unfortunately it didn't really happen. In the last 25 I was swimming up and down for a while so happy to get to the wall and get a silver medal.
"It's probably the worse (pain) I've gone through. I've swum faster before but it wasn't that painful but i just went out for that one and I really wanted that medal tonight.
The .., year old said he had .... since a disappointing world championships where he did not progress past the semi-finals.
"I put a lot of pressure on myself at worlds last year, I think I came in about second in the world and I didn't really cope," he said. "I've really just learnt to try and settle myself down and breathe in before the race and know that I've done the work and just trust myself really."
Meanwhile, Daniel Fox dominated the 200m freestyle (S14) final winning in 1:57.89. Fox broke the world record in the morning heats in response to edict from swimming officials that they wanted to see him break a world record at an overseas meeting after he had previously done so in Australia. He had intended to repeat the performance in the final but just fell short of his mark of 1:57.16.
"I'm a little bit disappointed but still happy," Fox said. "I'm still No.1, still breaking records and everything couldn't be any happier."
Ben Treffers will be the fastest qualifier for the 50 backstroke in 24.78. Josh Beaver (25.20) and Mitch Larkin (25.22) qualified fourth and sixth respectively.
