Eamonn Sullivan is enjoying his place in sprint swimming, if the following words are anything to go by: 'It's good to be known as the underdog but also good to know that people are thinking, 'He hasn't done the times but he's done it at worlds. It's good to know I'm in their minds, and if I can be sort of a silent assassin and get in there and do the job, that's what I like doing.'

The Melbourne 2007 bronze medallist is often overlooked for Beijing because times on paper put him out of the top 8 in the 100m freestyle. A good place to be, he says, in an interview with Michael Cowley at The Sydney Morning Herald.

A fair few are those who have zipped past the Dolphin on the scoreboard - Bernard, Nystrand etc - since he beat them to the podium in March 2007, but Sullivan is not phased. 'I don't think anyone's unbeatable,' he tells Cowley. 'We have seen it before. We thought Thorpey's record [200m free] would be unbroken for a long time, and then we saw Michael Phelps went out and did that [Melbourne 2007].

That's something people have in their mindset; if they don't think things are possible, that's where they don't achieve it. I'm going out there, I don't focus on what other people are doing. I don't get scared by what times they have swum, I go out there, and once you're in the final, everyone has a chance to win and no one is unbeatable.'

Sullivan races at the NSW Open titles, Sydney Olympic Park, this weekend. He is scheduled to attend a training camp at Canet, in France, in May. He would not be the only Aussie to head that way: Grant Hackett is the latest aquatic giant to choose Canet in southern France as a staging point on the pathway to the Olympic podium they seek to stand on, according to a report by Jean-Baptiste Renet at L'Équipe.

The 1,500m champion and world record holder will spend two weeks at Canet in April as final perparation for the Open Water 10km marathon trial in Seville on May 4.