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Swimmer Eve Thomas looks set to qualify for multiple events for the Paris Olympics when she competes at the World Aquatic Championships in Doha next month.
Her coach Dean Boxall, one of the world’s top coaches, says she’s good enough to make an Olympic final, something only three New Zealand swimmers have done since 2008.
Should she do so, this would make up for missing finals at last year’s world champs in Japan when she fell ill.
Forty years ago, Thomas’ mother, Sarah (nee Hardcastle), when aged 15, won multiple Olympic freestyle swimming medals as Britain’s youngest medallist.
Sarah initially retired at age 17, the age Eve got her first three national age group titles in this country after never previously qualifying for a final and started to take the sport seriously.
Just months later, Eve won bronze medals in both the 400m and 800m freestyle at the New Zealand Open championships, also qualifying for the Junior Pan Pacific championships.
Her seemingly late arrival, at 17, was a deliberate delay in her development to avoid athlete burnout that is unfortunately so prevalent in the sport, especially with women.
Two years later Thomas qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, and while she was placed just outside the top 16 in the 800m and 26th in the 1500m, she now swims faster than her mum ever did in most events.
Thomas, 22, has qualified for three individual freestyle events for these world champs in Doha, including the 800m and 1500m freestyle. She is one of three Aquablacks who will rank top 16; all three have qualified in three individual events.
At Doha, all will want to meet the tough Paris Olympics qualifying standards. Some are considerably tougher than any for other swimming competition. The women’s 1500m freestyle standard is nearly 23 seconds faster than it was for Tokyo, meaning the confident Thomas will have to do a personal best to meet it.
Before that, though, she aims to get to the finals in Doha, as she had at the 2022 world championships at Budapest, where the women’s 4x200m relay also made the final after another team’s late withdrawal.
At Doha, finals for Thomas are a real possibility, with top swimmers, including former world record holders Canadian Summer McIntosh and American Katie Ledecky, and one of Thomas’ closest friends, Australian Ariarne “Arnie” Titmus, bypassing the worlds to focus on the Paris Olympics just five months later.
Thomas will also again compete in the 400m freestyle at Doha, which she considers her ‘fun event to do’ but is her highest-ranked event. Fellow Aquablack Erika Fairweather will be the 400m top seed.
“The 800 and the 1500m events are the primary focus,” Thomas says. “With the 400m, I have to rely on my back-end as I don’t have the speed to go out as quick as the other girls do. But I really enjoy the race. It’s probably my favourite event and as it’s on the first day, it’s always nice to have what I call a hit-out race before what I consider are my main events.”
Thomas moved from Great Britain to New Zealand aged three with her parents and three brothers, settling in Orewa. She started swimming with the Coast Swimming Club on the Hibiscus Coast three years later and eventually studied at Orewa College.
In 2019 her Coast coach John Gatfield joined the staff of St Peters Western in Brisbane as assistant head coach and Thomas followed him over. Her mother Sarah joined the staff at St Peter’s Lutheran College. Gatfield returned to Coast in 2022, but Thomas remained. (While representing New Zealand, Thomas has worked with Coast’s head coach Michael Weston, who is also on the New Zealand coaching team for Doha.)
For the past five years, Thomas has been coached by one of the world’s top mentors, Australia’s head coach Dean Boxall, at St Peter’s Western, and Titmus has been a training partner.
Five of Boxall’s squad, including Titmus in the 400m freestyle, have set world records. The Australian standard is high: if you make the Australian team, you’re good enough to medal.
At the 2022 world championships, all 10 selected Australians from St Peter’s stood on the podium.
Boxall says Thomas has matured since arriving at St Peters and predicts she will swim well at Doha. He also believes she is good enough to make an Olympic final later in the year.
“Absolutely, I believe it,” he told Newsroom. “I believe she will go very well. Were Eve to achieve a medal on the international stage I would be uber excited because I know how much that girl has progressed. She has the opportunity to become a dual Olympian [Tokyo and Paris] which is a big carrot to chase, and is hugely motivating. She is certainly equipped herself with the tools physically and mentally to train at an elite level, has become very consistent in training and holds her own against the best in the world.”
Thomas adds: “My recent results are better than where Dean and I expected them to be. With our training camp in Thailand prior to the world champs I’m confident that the work is going to be in the tank. Dean has made a very good plan going onto these world champs to make them beneficial towards Paris.”
Having a swimmer with Titmus’ calibre in the lane next to her each day in the pool is also beneficial, Thomas says.
“Not only is Arnie a world record holder, but she’s one of my closest friends. Even though I may not be the primary focus, Arnie certainly is, and I do the same work as her – we push each other. Being able to train with someone like that every single day is definitely to my advantage.”
That advantage has led to Thomas swimming under tough Olympic qualifying times on multiple occasions this season. The only other Aquablack to do so this season is Fairweather, and both appear set to qualify in multiple events for Paris.
But had Thomas not moved from New Zealand she said she would not even be swimming.
“No, I don’t think I would be. I don’t think I would have gotten fast enough. I don’t think I would have understood the commitment, the effort, and the sacrifice it takes to get to where these people are until I saw it at St Peter’s,” she says.” The depth of our squad is insane; there’s very few places that have as much depth in their programme as we do.”
Boxall says the environment and the squad at St. Peter’s are crucial aspects of Thomas’ progress. “Not only my programme, but the people. The culture has been a critical important part of her development. Eve has really blossomed into an elite swimmer. She has matured so much as a person and as an athlete; her maturity has helped progress her swimming.”
Last year’s world champs were a hiccup, as Thomas fell sick. After speaking with Boxall, they decided she would tough it out and compete. While she didn’t progress to finals, she still met some Doha qualifying standards.
“I did not want to withdraw, I wanted to give it a crack because there was a little bit of me that thought I could pull something out,” she says. “But you’re standing on the blocks, and you know you are going to race bad. I know that’s not the mentality you want to have going into a race, but I knew I had very little to give. The 400m was exceptionally tough, diving in and feeling the fatigue. Having no easy front-end speed was one of the worst things ever. I still made the decision to race that 1500m – because if you don’t try you’ll never know.”
Most Aquablacks are swimming only freestyle events at Doha. Just Birmingham Commonwealth Games gold medallists, backstroker Andrew Jeffcoat, and Lewis Clareburt in butterfly and medleys, will not be.
Thomas is also looking forward to potentially leading out the New Zealand women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team as it attempts a last-chance qualification for Paris. This year’s team is promising – three clocked under two minutes in the 200m freestyle at trials for Doha. This was significantly better than the relay at Tokyo, where the team placed near the bottom of the field, with Thomas and Fairweather the only two swimmers to each clock faster than 2:02.00 seconds.
“I don’t think many of us wanted to do that Tokyo swim,” Thomas says. “We had a 200m backstroker put in as the fourth swimmer. The goal is to progress, and if we can’t progress, it’s unnecessary. But it’s now nice to have girls who are training for the event, they want that spot, they are fighting for it, and it’s an event they are focused on. With the right focus, we can make an evening (finals) swim at Doha and at Paris with the girls that we have.”
Funding, however, is often a challenge. While most top Australian swimmers are well funded, Thomas gets some funding through High Performance Sport NZ but always welcomes sponsorship. She also plans to launch a women’s activewear line later this year.
“It’s been very difficult being based in Australia,” she says. “Most sponsors are turned off by the fact that I’m not in my country of origin, which makes getting financial sponsors very difficult. Most of my sponsors are product. It gets a little bit difficult financially for some aspects of being in a squad that is as heavily funded as the Australian swimmers.
“Hopefully very soon I will have an activewear line that will go live before Paris which will be very exciting. Being an athlete, I spend a lot of time in activewear, so I know what I like.”
Most of Thomas’ recent results are now better than her mum clocked. It’s something both have been keeping a close eye on, as has Boxall as Thomas’ dream of another Olympics beckons.
“Eve used to be in the shadow of her mother, which is always very difficult situation to manage when they are a dual Olympic medallist,” Boxall says. “She has finally stepped out of it and started to paint her own swimming picture.”
Sarah Hardcastle was 0.12 seconds off an 800m freestyle world record when she clocked 8:24.77 seconds to win at the 1986 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. Thomas is nipping at her heels at 8:24.98 seconds, a 13 second improvement since qualifying for Tokyo.
“I’ve taken her out in the 100m, 200m, 400m, and 1500m so there’s only the 800m to go, and I can’t wait,” she says. “Mum likes to pretend she’s going to be excited when I take down all her times, but I know a little part of her always wanted to be number one in the house. She’s one competitive lady that’s for sure.
“That’s definitely where I get it from.”
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