Dubai-based Velimir Stjepanovic will commence his World Championships campaign on Sunday as he lines up for the 400m freestyle amongst a stellar field of contenders.
Stjepanovic, a European champion who has lived his whole life in the UAE but represents Serbia, will contest the sixth heat in the morning preliminaries alongside reigning world and Olympic champion Sun Yang, Britain’s James Guy – who is second fastest in the event his year – and Canadian Ryan Cochrane, with world leader Mack Horton of Australia contesting the following heat.
“It’s a quite a strong field in the 400 but I’m just planning on swimming my own race and just try to make finals. I’m not too worried about the rest of the field. It’s my race and I’ll try to swim as best as I can,” Stjepanovic told Sport360.
Stjepanovic, who turns 22 this Friday, took 400m freestyle bronze in the World Short Course Championships in Doha last December and won gold in the event in the European Long Course Championships in Berlin a few months earlier.
But having yet to make a podium at a World Aquatics Championship or the Olympics, Stjepanovic doesn’t necessarily see himself as a top contender against such giants like Sun Yang.
“I still feel like I’m sort of the underdog in this whole situation but at the end of the day I’ll just swim my own race,” admitted the Serb.
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Stjepanovic will also be competing in the 100m and 200m freestyle but has dropped the 200m butterfly, despite it being the event in which he experienced his first success on the global stage, finishing fifth at the London 2012 Olympics.
“I’m not doing the 200 fly because we didn’t really train much for fly for this entire year and I think it’s better to just focus on freestyle because it’s going well for me,” said the Hamilton Aquatics swimmer.
“After Serbian Nationals I struggled for about a week but it’s been getting better every day since then.
“I’m just trying to take this whole competition one step at a time and one race at a time so that I can focus fully on each race individually rather than thinking about the holistic view of the competition.”
Stjepanovic’s Hamilton Aquatics team-mate Mohammed Madouh of Kuwait has been training with the Serb and is hoping he can swim an Olympic standard qualifying time to make it to the Rio Games next year.
The 50m freestyle swimmer, who lives in Dubai, says Hamilton Aquatics have transformed him completely since he joined the club last year and he is looking forward to try and record a personal best in Kazan this week.
“Yesterday I was talking with my assistance coach about how I looked when I first started and how I look now, and I was watching videos comparing… I was laughing at the way I used to swim. And now I look substantially better than before so I am very happy about this positive progress,” said the 28-year-old Madouh.
“I am not nervous at all, being all excited about racing doesn't really make me nervous at all. My goal for Kazan is to peak perform and try to qualify for Olympics.
“I am only 0.21 seconds from making it… I am very very close.”
