Waikato teen Laura Littlejohn will compete in her first major international event as the only Kiwi swimmer at the world short course champs this week. And she's on track to make a splash.
Teenager Laura Littlejohn knows the world championships are the pinnacle of short course swimming competition. But she’s still disappointed she cannot yet call herself an Olympian.
The 17-year-old was hoping to make New Zealand’s 4x200m freestyle relay team for the Tokyo Olympics, but fell short at the qualifying meet, despite being one of the country’s four fastest freestylers. Her place was taken by an eligible backstroker.
“It was definitely disappointing and not what I wanted. But I learned a lot from the whole experience and being in that sort of pressure, which I’ve never been in before,” she says.
That pressure is about to ramp up. From Thursday, the student at St Paul's Collegiate in Hamilton - who trains in the school’s pool - will be in Abu Dhabi, competing in the senior world short course (25m pool) championships. It’s in the midst of a pandemic, but Littlejohn is not too bothered by that.
“It will definitely be a different experience,” she says. “There will be Covid testing all the time. Abu Dhabi is a very good place, it has 70 cases a day – less than New Zealand - so that’s a good sign.”
Littlejohn has qualified in four events, the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle, and the 100m individual medley (IM).
Despite missing some training, locked out of the pool for several weeks while the country was in lockdown, Littlejohn hopes to produce her best times at these world championships.
Her times are already handy. Her 50m freestyle best time, 24.85 seconds, is the second-fastest time by a female Kiwi teenager. Her 100IM time of 1m 00.59s, her 200IM time of 2m 10.51s, and her 100m freestyle time of 53.92s are the fastest any female teenager has ever swum in New Zealand. And all would have had her in the top 18 at the last world champs.
It will be Littlejohn’s first major swimming competition, having never competed outside New Zealand or Australia until this month. It’s also a user-pays trip (Swimming New Zealand decided not to send an official team to the UAE), but she’s had financial assistance from her school, the New Zealand Swimming Alumni and Swimming Waikato.
“Not many people get to do this in these Covid times,” she says. “I’m excited, this is my first big meet and I’m just looking forward to seeing the way different athletes approach big meets like this.
“Hopefully I can take some of these things back and put them into my own training.”
It was the 100m IM at the 2020 national short course championships in Hamilton in October that first qualified Littlejohn for the worlds, an event initially slated for December 2020.
Littlejohn was also one of just two New Zealanders to qualify for next year’s world junior championships in Kazan, Russia. Tokyo Olympic finalist and world junior 200m freestyle champion Erika Fairweather has also met juniors times, but to qualify, swimmers must be 17 on December 31 - the day Fairweather turns 18.
The 2021 swimming year was tough, as all national long course meets and some smaller meets were cancelled due to the pandemic.
“There were so many missed opportunities, but it was possible to make worlds happen,” Littlejohn says. “We just jumped on it and thought ‘Why not give it a crack and see what happens?’
“I really just wanted to get some international experience, put my toes in the water, just learn a lot about international racing and get to see how the real elite top dogs do it.”
In addition to the cancellations, the New Zealand short championships were also abruptly stopped during the first day when Auckland went into lockdown.
“That was really hard,” Littlejohn says. “I felt I had a good build-up to it. I was training well, then all of a sudden - bang! Lockdown.”
“I just had to refocus and set myself more goals, and it was at that point I was trying to figure out whether going to the world champs would be possible. Once I knew that I could, that was my new goal.
“When I don’t set myself goals, it can be challenging to keep going and keep mentally in the right head space.”
Littlejohn’s coach, St Paul’s head coach Graham Smith, says Littlejohn is resilient and knows how to deal with the sport’s curveballs.
“Laura has an ability to handle that really well, bounce back from it quite quickly and be able to handle some of these setbacks. You’ve got to be good at the mental part of the game,” he says.
Smith, who’s originally from Scotland, won’t be in Abu Dhabi; Littlejohn has travelled with her mother, Jenny. Smith has arranged some coaching and support for his top swimmer through contacts within the Irish team and he’s confident she will excel.
“She’s just a kid who is really driven, and has a passion for performing well,” Smith says. “I’m 100 percent confident in sending Laura away without a coach knowing that she will be able to handle this situation and will be able to gain and grow from this experience.”
The Littlejohns will also have a different Christmas day this year – it’s the day they return home.
“I’ll be spending half of Christmas Day in the air and the other half in a hotel,” Littlejohn says.
She first competed in the pool the day after her seventh birthday, and she currently holds more than 60 Waikato open and age group records.
She also holds 10 national age-group records – the most recent three in the 50m freestyle, 200m IM, and 100m butterfly set in Dubai last weekend in a lead-up meet to the world championships.
And she’s 0.35 seconds outside the national open record for 100m freestyle.
She’s always played sport, including cross country, athletics, gymnastics, water polo, badminton and netball right up until last year, when she felt she was good enough to focus on swimming, despite the daily 5am alarm for training.
“I could just see myself having a future in swimming,” she says. “I was really enjoying it, and it was something that I really wanted to pursue. I’ve always looked for challenges, I don’t usually choose the easy route. But it’s a super fun sport.”
Sport seems to run in the Littlejohn family. Littlejohn was the St Paul’s Collegiate sportswoman of the year in 2020 and 2021. Her older brother, Ben, is also a swimmer and at Harvard on a US college scholarship; sister Kate is rower who’s also on a college scholarship at Stanford. Both won sportsperson of the year awards while at St Paul’s. Laura would like to follow them to the US after she leaves school next year.
For the past eight years, she’s been volunteering at Riding for the Disabled (now Waikato Equitherapy) helping look after the horses and support riders. It helps her keep perspective, doing something outside of sport.
“I can help kids who are less fortunate and who can’t do things that I am lucky enough to be able to do,” she says.
After the world champs, Littlejohn is eyeing the 4x200m freestyle relay team for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham next year, but she’s using her Olympic trials and worlds competition as a stepping-stone to her big goal: the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“When I’m in the position to try and qualify for Paris, I’d have been through these processes. I just need to get stronger and faster,” she says. “I love swimming. I love to race. I want to be competitive, to continually improve, and do the best I can.”
