Newcomer Ffrost Warming Up To Make His Mark As A Middle-distance Contender
The Age
Thursday February 2, 2006
TWO years after he moved to the Gold Coast to train under Ian Thorpe's former mentor Doug Frost, and was regularly lapped by the girls who swam at the same Southport pool, Nick Ffrost is the first of the new generation of middle-distance men to have answered Australian swimming's call.
For when head coach Alan Thompson asked the nation's young male swimmers to show their faces in the absence of Ian Thorpe from the 400 metres freestyle and Grant Hackett from the pool at this week's Commonwealth Games trials, the 19-year-old from Mackay was listening.Ffrost's second place behind Craig Stevens in the 400, and more importantly his second place to Thorpe in the 200, means he will swim both events at next month's Games. He has, according to both Frost and Ffrost, come a long way since he arrived at Southport in February 2004, and even further since the pupil followed his coach to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra nine months ago."The distance girls were beating him, because he had no perception of it. But he had good technique that was taught to him by Pat Wright (in Mackay)," said Frost, who was the self-proclaimed "hard-ass" the swimmer needed to whip himself into shape.Ffrost said: "Doug and I really understand each other. When I first started training with him I was really unfit and a little bit soft around the edges. Doug's really hardened me up, not only physically but mentally."In some ways, his situation explains the lack of depth in the men's middle-distance events without Thorpe, Hackett and the ailing Nic Sprenger. "Up until now Ian and Hacky have had a monopoly on the 400 and I think that deters a lot of people from swimming it because you know you're not going to be on the team," Frost said. "When the gap came I thought, 'At least we might give it a try,' and I think we might continue to do the 400 now that he's got a bit of a handle on it. "
© 2006 The Age
