Swimming New Zealand nominate Kane Radford for Rio Olympics

Swimming New Zealand has nominated open water swimmer Kane Radford to the New Zealand Olympic Committee to be considered for selection to the Rio Olympics.

Accordingly the New Zealand Olympic Committee has announced the selection of Radford for the Rio Olympics.

Radford appealed after he was initially not nominated by Swimming New Zealand who did not believe his performances at the Nomination Events (being world championships last year where he was 30th and the final Olympic qualifying race in Portugal where he was 19th to miss direct qualification) were sufficient to show he was capable of a top 16 finish with the potential to win an Olympic Diploma (Top 8) at Rio.

The Sports Tribunal (hearing the appeal under urgency) believed that more weight should been given to the swimmer’s view that his chances in Portugal were seriously impeded 250m from the finish by another swimmer who was disqualified for his tactics. Accordingly Radford believed he would have finished “further up the field.”

The Tribunal also commented that the selectors should have also given more weight to his third placing at the Pan Pacific Championship last year and other World Cup performances rather than heavily weighting their decision on his finish at the World Championships and Olympic Qualifier event.

Swimming New Zealand said on the basis of the Sports Tribunal’s position, it was prudent to nominate Radford for selection.

However the Tribunal did not uphold the appeal from Charlotte Webby claiming there was insufficient evidence to support her appeal.

“The data in Marathon Swimming is more open to conjecture and while our selectors had one position, Kane had another which was ultimately supported by the Sports Tribunal,” said Swimming New Zealand chief executive, Christian Renford.

“Our selection criteria and process is open and transparent, and allows our swimmers the opportunity to appeal. We fully support the rights of both Kane and Charlotte to appeal.

“However we continue to fully support our selectors and respect the fact that they have always acted with upmost integrity and in the light of information that they have had available.”

“While we feel for Charlotte in this case, we will continue to support Kane through to Rio after investing significantly in his open water ambitions over the last three years since London,” Mr Renford said.