Schoeman is worried

Veteran Olympic medallist Roland Schoeman has warned that the men's 4x100m freestyle relay team going to London is lagging compared to South Africa's victorious crew of eight years ago.

Schoeman and Darian Townsend are the survivors of the foursome, who stunned Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and Peter van den Hoogenband in Athens in 2004, winning gold in the discipline in a world record time.

Schoeman and his Arizona teammates Ryk Neethling and Lyndon Ferns swam below 49 seconds, while Townsend, based in Durban at the time, broke 50 seconds. "We need to figure out what's happening with our 100m freestyle," Schoeman said at the close of the SA Championships in Durban on Sunday.

"If you look at the Aussies they've got two guys going 47 [seconds] and a handful of guys going 48-mids. Gideon [Louw] is our fastest at 48.7. We realistically need our guys doing 48-mids to 48-lows to stand a chance."

Schoeman finished second in the 100m freestyle in 49.25sec, ahead of Townsend and Graeme Moore. Townsend and Moore have dipped below 49sec before.

"I think we have enough time to figure that out," added Schoeman, who also won the 100m freestyle silver and 50m freestyle bronze in Athens. "I think we're slightly behind where we were in 2004, but that's not a bad thing. The pressure's off us, nobody's really expecting us to be in a medal position, which is great."

Swimming SA high-performance manager Dean Price described the men's 4x100m freestyle and medley foursomes as "powerful relay teams" but said there would be no 4x200m freestyle team going to London.

"We are too far outside the time [top five in the world]," Price said. "To meet that time Chad [Le Clos] would have to swim the relay, which is the same day as the 200m butterfly, where he is ranked third in the world. We had to weigh up - do we swim for a seventh place in the relay or do we give Chad the opportunity of going for a bronze medal in the 200m fly? We had to make that call. We're going for medals."

Le Clos will compete in at least five events - his four individual events (200m and 400m individual medley as well as the 200m freestyle and fly) and at least the medley relay - although he has said he wants to challenge for a spot on the freestyle relay team.