Rex Kelland of Kerepēhi was around 17 years old when he broke the Hauraki Plains College senior boys one length freestyle race with a time of 15.10.
That was in 1979.
Earlier this month, after 47 years of years of holding the record, Rex dropped into his old stomping ground to meet 16-year-old Kingston Welsh, the young swimmer who recently broke the former record with a new time of 14.56.
“He [Kingston] didn’t break it by just a little bit – he broke it by quite a lot for what the record was just for one length freestyle,” Rex told The Profile.
“He didn’t break it by like a tenth, he broke it by half a half a second which is pretty amazing. He really smashed the thing. More power to him, he seems like he’s really going places,” he said.
“I still like swimming but after I left school, I got an apprenticeship with a post office workshop in my role as a mechanic.”
The 64-year-old mechanic said he got into hot rods and classic cars and “I never put a foot in the water for like seven years, and yet up until then I was training 13 times a week”.
The car fanatic now lived in Modesto, California in the United States of America and operated a classic car restoration business called Kiwi Classics and said he came back to New Zealand for a lot of big car events.
By DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA
