By Eva Hegyi
This has been an amazing year for the Edmonton-trained, Vancouver-based breaststroke champion Annamay Pierse. In March, she broke Australian star Liesel Jones’ world short-course mark in the 200-metre breaststroke at the Canadian spring nationals in Toronto. She lowered the mark to two minutes, 17.50 seconds from 2:17.75. In June, she lowered her own national mark in the 100-metre breaststroke. At the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome in August, Pierse set a new long-course world record in the 200m breaststroke semi-finals with a time of 2.20.12. and came second in the final. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Pierse finished in 6th at the 200-metre breaststroke. For the 25-year old Canadian swimmer, these are all steps along the pathway to the 2012 Summer Games in London. Read about Pierse and her coach here.
Pierse’s demanding and perfectionist coach is the Hungarian Jozsef Nagy, who made a name for himself coaching Mike Barrowman, a U.S. breaststroke star in the 1980s. Nagy, who was also coach of the Hungarian Honvéd swim team, received the Petro-Canada Coaching Excellence Award in November 2009; read about it here.