Klim's welcome return
By Nicole Jeffery
October 28, 2003
MICHAEL KLIM faced the starter's gun for the first time in 14 months last weekend but 48.7 seconds later it was as if he had never been away.
In a low-key club meet in Melbourne, the former world champion and world record-holder turned back the clock to the stellar years before the horrific run of injuries that have transformed him into a spectator in the past two years.
He swam the 100m freestyle (short course) in 48.7sec, a time that would have won this year's national championship and is also little more than a second outside his best time of 47.49sec.
"He was really happy with it," Klim's coach Ian Pope said yesterday. "We were hoping for something around the 50sec mark.
"After what he's been through with two years of operations, to come out and be one second off your best is very good.
"He was a bit nervous before but he raced well. I was happy with everything. One or two of his turns could have been better, but you never get the perfect race."
The 26-year-old Klim's last major championship was the 2001 world titles which he contested with a badly damaged ankle, the result of a basketball mishap two months earlier.
He had his first bout of surgery late that year, then suffered a disc problem in early 2002. He was literally on his knees when he announced that he would have further surgery that would rule him out of last year's Commonwealth Games.
Klim had just returned at the national short-course championships a year ago when a shoulder injury flared which required a third engagement with the knife, costing him this year's world titles.
But now he hopes for a clear run through to the Olympic trials in March, and onward to the Games in Athens.
Pope said this first hitout had convinced them that Klim was ready for a more public comeback at next month's World Cup meet in Melbourne, where he is likely to contest the 50m and 100m freestyle and possibly the 50m butterfly.
They will also consider the Qantas Skins in Sydney on November 26.
"His shoulder has come up fine after the weekend, he looks good and he's physically fit," Pope said.
This will all be music to the ears of Australian Swimming's powers-that-be.
His value lies far beyond his past brilliance as an individual sprinter. Australia has lost its ascendancy over the US in the men's 4x100m freestyle in his absence, and is being threatened in the 4x200m freestyle for the first time in five years.
