Swimming - World Aquatics Championships - Aspire Dome, Doha, Qatar - February 18, 2024 New Zealand's Lewis Clareburt celebrates on the podium with the gold medal after winning the men's 400m medley final REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina
MELBOURNE, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Former 400 metres individual medley world champion Lewis Clareburt will leave his native New Zealand to train under coach Jolyon Finck at Melbourne's Nunawading Swimming Club as he targets a maiden Olympic medal at Los Angeles 2028.
The 26-year-old Wellington swimmer, who won the 2024 world title in a depleted field at Doha and took world bronze at Gwangju in 2019, will join Finck's programme with other medley specialists.
Men's medley swimming has been dominated by French sensation Leon Marchand, who trains in Texas under master coach Bob Bowman and swept the 200 and 400 medley golds at his home Paris Olympics.
World record holder Marchand also swept the 200 and 400 world titles for a third time in Singapore this year, following his sweeps in 2022 and 2023.
Bowman, the former coach of Michael Phelps, prepared Carson Foster in his Texas University programme before the American took bronze in the 400m at Paris.
Clareburt said Finck, who worked with top British swimmer James Guy, was looking to develop a school of medley swimmers able to rival the best in the United States.
"We're looking to create a really strong medley training group in Melbourne," Clareburt said in a statement on Wednesday.
"At the moment there's a really successful medley training group in the U.S. and they're winning all the medals internationally.
"If medley swimmers from Australia and New Zealand want to be on the podium we need to have a similar group in the southern hemisphere and that's what we're looking to set up."
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry)
