Thabang Moeketsane still pinches himself from time to time. "I worked hard to win the title, but it still is a shock to be called a South African champion."
The Soweto-born breaststroke swimmer heads into the World Championship trials in Durban, starting on Wednesday, expecting to perform well enough to qualify for the Melbourne showpiece next year. However, with his first South African title - in the 100m short-course in September - comes the weight of expectation.
Moeketsane swam to short-course (25m pool) gold in a time of 1min 00.76sec, his first at a national meeting, although he had won two in an African senior championship.
He competed just one day in the Gauteng championships at the weekend with the intention of resting as much as possible before this week's long-course (50m pool) trials. In Durban he will contest the 50, 100 and 200m breaststroke events.
"I expect to qualify for Melbourne, especially in the 50m breaststroke," he said. His best time is 28.95 seconds in the 50m and 1:03 in the 100m. The 50m qualifying time is 28.1 while that of the 100m breaststroke is 1:01.9 - which means he has a lot to do.
However, work is not something that scares Moeketsane. He started swimming as a young boy in Soweto - where his grandmother worked as a cleaner at a swimming pool 100m from their home in Moletsane.
He was then spotted during a lifesaver training programme and joined the programme.
"Even then I would swim only for recreation, but I started entering development galas around Gauteng. In my first competition - a development championship - I won two silver medals," he says.
At 16, he was approached by Swimming South Africa and they offered him to join a three-month development programme at Pretoria's High Performance Centre in 2003.
Now 19, Moeketsane says the offer was to change his life. "It was not just an opportunity to improve my swimming; it was a big step as it included a chance for a better education."
"The biggest change was that, in my township programme we would swim about 2km a day and now I was up to 18km... about 95km a week. All of a sudden swimming had become so difficult," he said.
But Moeketsane decided to tackle the challenge head on. "I can't explain the feeling after my first 18km-a-day swim, I had the option of turning my back but I kept going."
Six months later Moeketsane was awarded with a call-up to the national team and he swam for South Africa for the first time in the Durban leg of the (short-course) World Cup in December 2003.
"Moving from development to the international stage was daunting... overwhelming," he says. "But I enjoyed the attention and wanted to show everybody what I can do," he said.
Moeketsane failed to qualify for the Olympics in 2004 but swam in his first nationals that year.
"I was happy to compete for a chance to go to the Olympics, considering that a year before I was an unknown in Soweto."
He won two bronze medals in the short-course championships in 2004 and represented SA in the youth Commonwealth Games in Australia, returning with silver medals in the two events.
In March this year Moeketsane went to the Commonwealth Games and now his focus is to return to Australia and making an impact.
He says he has been working with national coach Dirk Lange for the past two months, full-time.
"Our immediate focus is to qualify for the World Championships in Melbourne, but we are also working on long-term training for the 2008 Olympics."
Moeketsane has just completed his matric and says he will put 2007 aside to focus solely on his training and qualifying for Beijing 2008.
Back in Moletsane, he says nothing much has changed in terms of swimming development but some locals now recognise him. "People do stop me on the street and say: 'I think I know you from somewhere.'"