Interviewer, John Clarke and others in “Lateline/Rural”

Okay, well tell me about the major changes to the swimming programme.

Well, what's currently proposed is the, what I believe I've just given you a copy of, which is that all heats will be run in the morning, as they normally are... slight change insofar as heats will be worked out on the best of three, times will obviously count. Perhaps Gina knows a little bit more about this than I do?

Thank you John. Yes, each swimmer will swim three heats in each event, the swimmer's slowest heat time will then be dropped, the other two times will then be multiplied by three over two then divided by three to give an aggregate time and the fastest 32 times will then move on to the next round.

Yes, and then there's a "wild card" entry, for those who are the top place getters in each of the races in which the fastest three times were recorded, and then there'll be quarter-finals, and then there'll be finals, and then there'll be repechages.

Remind me, what is a repechage?

After the final sequence of heats, competitors who have not been successful go back into a stage of three previous heats in which there is a separate sequence of semi-finals - quarter-finals and semi-finals - and so people are given another chance, really. And then there'll be, obviously, a preliminary final, and then a quarter-final, semi-final, and then the rounds of three heats subsequent to the repechages, and the quarter-finals and semi-finals in respect of those, and that'll fill the eighth lane - the other seven lanes being filled as I've described - and, er, so, you know, that's fairly simple.