Nick D'Arcy opts for quiet celebration

AFTER all the grief caused by his last post-Olympic selection celebration, Nick D'Arcy is planning nothing more than a quiet family dinner this week.

Nick D'Arcy

AFTER all the grief caused by his last post-Olympic selection celebration, Nick D'Arcy is planning nothing more than a quiet family dinner this week.

D'Arcy forced his way into the London Games team with an all-the-way victory in the 200m butterfly last night.

In the space of one wild night following his selection in the team for the 2008 Beijing Games, D'Arcy went from national hero to national villain when a celebratory drink at a Sydney bar ended with former Olympic breaststroker Simon Cowley suffering serious facial injuries.

A disgraced D'Arcy was banned from the Olympic team and subsequently found guilty by a court of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm and handed a 14-month suspended jail sentence. Cowley then began private civil legal proceedings that resulted last July in D'Arcy being ordered to pay him $180,000.

But in what Cowley's lawyer Sam Macedone described as "a cop-out", D'Arcy in November filed for bankruptcy after having paid his victim only a fraction of what the court had ordered.

Cowley then petitioned both Swimming Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee to exclude D'Arcy from the London team, irrespective of how he performed at the selection trials in Adelaide but both organisations, no doubt weighing up their own legal exposure, decided there was nothing they could do.

It was against that tortuous backdrop that D'Arcy swam the fastest time in the world this year, 1min 54.71sec -- 0.6sec faster than what US phenomenon Michael Phelps recorded last month -- to blitz the field at the Olympic selection trials in Adelaide last night.

His first placing alone guaranteed him a place in the team but just for good measure the 24-year-old medical student also made a nonsense of the Olympic A-qualifying time of 1min 56.86sec. Happily, fellow Queenslander Chris Wright also dipped under it, by half a second, to ensure that the astonishing trend at these trials of two swimmers qualifying in every event swum continued.

Yet there was no question D'Arcy was the most sedate, least animated swimmer so far to qualify for London. And that's the way he intends to keep it.

"I'll probably go out to dinner with my parents," he said. "That will be about it at this stage. I'll be keeping it a bit quiet this week and maybe have a couple of friends over or something when I get home.

"It's the selection trials and you have to remember it is the selection trials and the big one (the London Games) is coming up in 14 weeks. While it was great to get a good time and a big relief to get on the team and a great feeling, I think you've got to stay focused for the next 14 weeks."

D'Arcy said there were times when he felt like walking away from swimming entirely. "It's been pretty tough. There have been some times when I wasn't sure if I was going to continue on but days like today make it all worthwhile."

While D'Arcy was talking restraint, reigning world champion James Magnussen was talking possible world records when he lines up for tonight's 100m freestyle final, having blitzed last night's semi-finals in 47.93sec.

A swimmer who won't be chasing it with him is former world record holder in this event Michael Klim, 34, who finished 15th in the semi-finals. His comeback hopes of making the team now hang on the 100m butterfly tomorrow and Wednesday.