Ghanaian carpenter enters pantheon of heroic failures

MELBOURNE, March 25 (Reuters) - Ghana's Bernard Blewudzi earned himself a place among the ranks of swimming's heroic failures on Sunday with a determined effort to complete his 400m freestyle heat at the world championships in Melbourne.

The 21-year-old finished over two and a half minutes slower than the fastest qualifier for Sunday night's final, but was given the biggest roar of the morning's heats by an enthusiastic Rod Laver Arena crowd.

He finally crawled home in six minutes 23.27 minutes to the respectful applause of his heat rivals, and was some 52 seconds behind the next slowest qualifier.

"At the end I feel very tired, but I knew I was going to finish," said Blewudzi, a full-time carpenter. "It feels good to represent my country." Blewudzi's brave effort revived memories of Eric 'The Eel' Moussambani, who went on to minor celebrity status at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 when he trailed home in his 100m freestyle heat, in a time slower than the 200m world record.

Ghanaian Blewudzi was only able to get a flight via Dubai to Melbourne arriving the day of the 10km open water race last week, his lift from the airport taking him directly to the St Kilda Beach start.

He finished the course but was given no time after he completed the four laps outside the permitted limit, but Blewudzi remained upbeat about his swimming career.

HUMBLE PREPARATION

"My job is furniture carpentry, but I prefer swimming because it is what I like best."

Blewudzi exemplified the gulf in training facilities and preparation enjoyed by the minnows and the swimming world's powerhouses. While the likes of Michael Phelps, Grant Hackett and Laure Manaudou train at the best facilities with closely monitored diets and regular physiological testing, the sport's lesser light are left to manage with more humble preparation.

"We don't have any pools where I come from. All our training is done in the lagoon, in salt water," said Raukura Waiti of the Cook Islands, who finished last in his 50-metre butterfly heat in a pedestrian 28.81 seconds. "The weather in the Cook Islands is always nice so that's never a problem. There's no lane markings or anything like that obviously, so we have to use the coral heads as targets to swim to.

"And we don't even have any buoys so we use coke bottles tied with string and swim around those."

Fellow 50m butterfly specialist Iglay Dangassat-Sissoulou was equally out of his depth, seeing his journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo wasted when he fell off the blocks in his heat, resulting in automatic disqualification.

And Lesotho suffered the indignity of being lapped by Indonesia and Mongolia in the men's 4x100m freestyle heats.