World champ striving to be first off the block

2026-02-08 - 16:08

Champion swimmer Zoe Pedersen may have outtouched an Olympian to win the world junior 50m butterfly title last year, but she’s determined to fix one aspect of her race that troubles her before she’s hopefully selected for this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where she’s targeting another medal. Her concern is the time it takes her feet to leave the starting blocks. It’s called a reaction time, measured by a pad on the blocks. Pedersen’s mission to improve comes as she’s set to receive new targeted funding from Swimming New Zealand, part of a wider effort to assist younger swimmers to compete at pinnacle events, particularly the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Swimming NZ recently secured $180,000 in targeted funding from High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) to help top junior swimmers transition to the senior ranks. Pedersen, 18, was last off the blocks in her 50m butterfly heat at world juniors. She was last off the blocks in her final, too, but touched the wall first to win the world title by a mere 0.03s from Japan’s Mizuki Hirai. An Olympian and a senior world championships finalist, Hirai has seven world junior medals and junior world records to her name. Heading off a swimmer like Hiria, and in a time of just 0.17s outside a world junior record, was a top effort for Pedersen. She dropped her best time by half a second from seed to final. That’s a breakthrough at that level. “My drop was insane, but when I go back and watch that race the only thing I see is that start,” Pedersen says. “Had I got an average start I would have got the junior world record; it hurts a little bit. “When something in the race goes wrong everything else in the race can still go right if I trust myself. But my starts are pretty rubbish. I need to fix up my reaction times. “It’s something that I’ve struggled with for years, but it was never so noticeable until I was chucked on the world stage; it’s something in the brain that I’ve got to fix.” She will. View this post on Instagram Pedersen is one of the country’s highest-ranked swimmers globally – only Hazel Ouwehand and Erika Fairweather are currently ranked higher. All are aiming to get their first Commonwealth Games medal at Glasgow. Last year Pedersen was ranked fifth in the Commonwealth and was one of five swimmers ranked 13th globally. Ony five female world junior champions have a higher world ranking. Despite the tough qualifying standard for the Commonwealth Games, Pedersen says she can meet them again and is up for it. “I think I am, mentally I am. I believe I can do it and that’s the most important thing. My coach believes I can do it and my family believes I can do it too,” she says. Pedersen is competitive at a senior global level, quicker than she expected to be. Had she clocked just 0.20s faster than her world juniors win at her first senior world championships the previous month, she would have been just the third female from New Zealand to grace a podium at a long course world championship, and the only Aquablack to do so on senior debut at a world championship. “It’s something that I didn’t expect would happen so quickly, so it’s good to know that I’m that fast and that competitive now, putting up times that are going to be successful worldwide,” she says. “It’s cool to just know that the goals I put up for myself are possible.” For perspective, had Pedersen clocked the same reaction time as Hirai at world juniors – 0.20s faster – and swam the remainder of her event the way she did, she would have broken multiple records: the world junior and championships records, a Commonwealth youth record and a New Zealand Open record. Zoe Pederson on the top step of the 50m butterfly podium at the 2025 world junior champs. Photo: Istvan Derencsenyi/World Aquatics She wasn’t far off. As it is, four of Pedersen’s last five attempts in 50m butterfly were all New Zealand age group records. Pedersen was nominated for two sports awards last year. She was awarded the Auckland secondary schools sportswoman of the year and is also a finalist for next week’s Halberg Awards, one of two females in the emerging athlete category for both surf lifesaving and swimming. She may have just missed out on a world junior swimming record, but she is a surf lifesaving junior world record holder in the 100m rescue medley, lowering her own record the month following the swimming world junior championships. She is studying part-time extramurally at Massey University towards a Bachelor of Health Science, majoring in occupational health and safety. She says she’s also focusing more on swimming this year, over surf lifesaving and that sport’s world championships this year. “It will be cool to go worlds for surf again, but at the moment swimming is my priority,” she says. The Commonwealth Games are one of three major competitions Pedersen hopes to be selected for this year. The other two are the short course world championships in China in December and the Pan Pacific championships starting in California 10 days after the Commonwealth Games end. Pedersen is one of just a handful of Aquablacks to have ever gone under tough Games standards, doing so twice in 24 hours. Zoe Pedersen with coach John Gatfield. Photo: BW Media Pedersen’s 2025 coach, John Gatfield, also New Zealand’s head coach at world juniors, says many teenagers, such as 2023 world juniors silver medallist Monique Wieruszowski, Pedersen, and multiple 50m backstroke champion Gabrielle Fa’amausili, have had success at world juniors level. “But I don’t feel in the past we’ve been in a position to set up those swimmers to be able to transition really well at performance level,” he says. Running a swimming programme and competing internationally costs money. Swimming New Zealand lost 40 percent of its high-performance funding after last year’s Olympics and Paralympics, where for the first time, no-one won medals in either. But New Zealand swimmers are getting on the podium at every entered – world juniors at their own cost. “You’d hope to think you’d be in a position to back a person like Zoe,” Gatfield says. “If you are not in a position to support your biggest potential medal hopes as they pop up in the span of four years, well you’re up shit creek a bit really, aren’t you.” Swimming NZ bosses appear to agree. They recently sought additional funding to support top juniors towards senior level in the hope they can qualify for the 2028 LA Olympics. “Zoe Pedersen’s international travel programme over the coming 12 months will be well in excess of $15,000, possibly $20,000,” says the Swimming NZ’s head of high performance, Graeme Maw. Maw has worked to secure $180,000 of targeted funding through HPSNZ over two years, to support top junior swimmers as they transition to senior level, something that Pedersen is grateful for as it will assist with international travel costs. “It’s something that’s been needed for a while,” she says. “Swimming New Zealand has done really well finding a place for that and helping us where they can. Becoming a [top] junior athlete is something that you really want to do and once you do that, there is no middle ground. It jumps from junior to senior – but now there’s a little bit of space to set some other goals.” Maw says the funding comes with performance support services as well. “Zoe and Michael [Weston, Pedersen’s coach] are now able to work with HPSNZ practitioners, strength and conditioning, and physiotherapy.” Last year, four teenagers placed in the top five in pinnacle competitions for New Zealand with Pedersen and para swimmer Gaby Smith standing on the podium despite a reduction in the pathway and support for younger swimmers. “We could not support our top juniors with limited resources,” Maw says. “We worked hard with HPSNZ to give them what we believed was a strong and convincing programme, and we received the money two weeks ago.” As well as Pedersen, other teenagers to be assisted will be world junior finalists Milan Glintmeyer and Wieruszowski, as well as para-swimmer Rylee Sayer, who placed fifth at last year’s world para swimming championships – 18 months after her right arm, shoulder, and clavicle were amputated to remove aggressive bone cancer. Pedersen, though, has had a rapid rise since qualifying for the Division II national championships in 2021. She won her first national age grade title the next year, and the following year she competed in her first world juniors final. Now, still a teenager, the three 2026 pinnacle competitions are the focus. “I want to go to those comps and do really well,” she says. “I think I just have to trust myself that the training I’m doing and the times I’m producing are going to get me to where I want to be.”