Brett Naylor a great ambassador to Southland ...

After ten years of high pressure of top swimming former Invercargill swimmer, Brett Naylor has shifted his emphasis in the sport from competing to coaching since retirement from competitive swimming earlier this year.  Naylor has been back in New Zealand for six weeks and has recently married a Christchurch girl, Colleen Timmings. He heads back to the States where he has be domiciled on an athletics sponsorship at the University of Iowa.

One of the top swimmers produced out of Southland, he has been at the University since 1977 and is studying a Bachelor of Science Degree in physical education.  There are 25,000 at the University and found the system to his liking with the early morning and late afternoon times for swimming practice, while the rest of the time for lectures.
When he first arrived at Iowa University was at the bottom of the Big 10 conference, but this year won beating Indian, one of the best colleges in the country.  He found the competing as good as the Olympics with over 3,000 spectators at a meet and the atmosphere could be cut with a knife sometimes when the swimmers took their blocks. 
Flexibility of swimming: He never did anything like this in New Zealand and really got himself really muscle bound and was actually fighting against himself, compared to the American swimmers who were very flexible.  He still holds great admiration for Duncan Laing in Dunedin and has kept in touch with him, but has found different approaches to training.
He was surprised that a lot of his records still stand, even some that are five or six years old.  Officials feel bitter and disappointed when the top swimmers start leaving.  Naylor also pointed out that there had been some disappointments concerning swimmers who had been selected for New Zealand on basis of times swum in the USA. but unfortunately were not repeated when they represented the country.  

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