TOKYO (Reuters) – Sweden’s Olympic 100m butterfly champion Sarah Sjostrom is happy with her last few weeks of preparation ahead of the Tokyo Games despite wishing she had a few more weeks of training, she said on Friday.
Sjostrom, who will be competing at her fourth Olympics, had surgery for a broken elbow she suffered falling on ice in February, leaving her out of the water for months.
“I don’t feel pain in my elbow anymore and yeah, I’ve been improving all the way from February until now, so I’m super happy with that,” she told a press conference.
The 27-year-old is due to swim the 50m and 100m freestyle as well as the 100m butterfly which starts on Saturday.
Sjostrom had told Swedish media in mid-May that she had only just begun swimming butterfly again, prompting speculation as to whether she would scratch the race in Tokyo.
While she holds the world record for the 100m butterfly with a time of 55.48 which she set in Rio, she will be up against stiff competition including American Torri Huske, Australia’s Emma McKeon, China’s Zhang Yufei and Canadian Maggie MacNeil who are all top contenders for the podium.
“This is my fourth Olympics and I have had very different kind of preparations than I had for my last three. It’s a different kind of challenge,” she said.
“I’m going to do everything I can to do my best, and we’ll see how it goes.”
(Reporting by Farah Master; Editing by Stephen Coates)
