Troy Balvert (Waves) finished runner-up in the 5km at the New South Wales open water championships in Sydney last weekend.
Balvert (19) was second in 58min 28.89sec in a photo finish behind Yuto Kobayashi (Japan), who was timed at 58min 28.08sec. Casey Clover (New Zealand) was third in 58min 30sec.
Balvert started aggressively and got into the front bunch after 150m. He then drafted off this bunch for the next 4.5km.
With 500m left there were only seven swimmers in the leading group and it was a desperate sprint to the line.
The 10km event last Sunday was shortened because of a thunderstorm that forced the organisers to end the race at the 7500m mark, when Balvert was in fifth.
• Kurt Crossland (Neptune) broke his Otago senior men's 50m backstroke record when he won the open event at the Southland championships last weekend.
In fact, he broke the record twice. His heat time was 26.95sec and his final time 26.50sec.
Crossland (27) also won the 200m backstroke and the 100m and 200m freestyle.
Han Zhang (Neptune) came close to breaking the Otago boys aged 12 and 13 50m breaststroke record. He also won the 100m and 200m breaststroke.
Jeremy Hopkins (Neptune) won the 200m backstroke and 200m freestyle in the same grade.
The best Waves club swimmer at the Southland championships was Caitlin Deans (11), who broke her Otago 200m freestyle record with a time of 2min 21.13sec. It was a personal-best by 1.85sec over the time she swam last month when she broke this 1974 record. Deans then backed up by breaking the 400m freestyle Otago record of Waves clubmate Stef Gillespie, whose 2007 time was 5min 4.34sec.
Deans's time was 4min 52.71sec.
She also broke Gillespie's record with her 100m freestyle time with 1min 7.36sec.
Eilis Doyle (200m freestyle) and Bailey Brandham (1500m freestyle) qualified for national age-group championships for the first time.
Other major Invercargill winners were Caitlin Deans, Nicole Heaton, Chris Dickie, Emmabeth Jensen and Jack Turner.
