You would expect someone with the name Ayrton Sweeney to be super fast. After all, he's named after Brazilian Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna, and carries a surname that, in Cockney rhyming slang, means flying squad.But Sweeney has had to work hard to become the newest face on the South African swimming team.When he qualified for the world championships to be held in Kazan, Russia, in August, he finally buried the bitter disappointments of last year, when he narrowly missed out getting to the Commonwealth Games in Scotland and the world short course championships in Qatar.story_article_left1"It felt like one of the worst years of my life," said Sweeney, who moved to Durban in 2013 to train alongside Olympic gold medalist Chad le Clos and other South African swimmers under national coach Graham Hill.First he missed qualifying in the 400m individual medley (IM) for the Games by just 0.7sec."It [not qualifying] took it out of me. It killed me. Training in Graham's squad, with so many national swimmers, if you don't make the team it's like you're left behind," he said.While many of his stablemates went to Glasgow in Scotland, he made the daily trek to the Lahee Park pool in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal."I was training in the winter with a few other guys and it was a lonely place," he said.block_quotes_start It took it out of me. It killed me. if you don't make the team it's like you're left behind block_quotes_endFor the world short course (25m pool) championships in Doha, he failed to qualify in five events by no more than 0.5sec.He said: "After that, I was completely broken. I doubted myself. I thought maybe it was a sign to stop, but Graham told me to continue."And I still had the dream."Sweeney's dream of winning an Olympic gold medal first materialised when he started swimming at the age of eight, encouraged by a coach to get more competitive than the annual school gala.story_article_right2At the national championships last month, he had his favourite 400m IM in the morning and the 200m breaststroke final that evening."I was going to swim both, going for a 400m IM qualifying time in the morning and then scratch from the final."When I woke up, I just knew I wasn't going to swim the 400m IM. I can't explain it. I knew the 400m IM wasn't going to happen for me," said Sweeney, who studies law and models for extra cash in his spare time.He went out that evening and clobbered three seconds off his 200m breaststroke personal best to win in 2min 11.64sec and qualify by two-hundredths of a second.In Russia, he wants to improve by another second and make the semifinals, but by the Olympics next year, he wants to break the 2:09.61 South African record, dipping to 2:08, which he hopes would be medal territory. And why not? Hill's first Olympic medal came in the 200m breaststroke silver, courtesy of Terence Parkin in 2000...