The Dunedin swimmer finished sixth in the women’s 400m freestyle final at the swimming world championships in Budapest early yesterday (NZ time).
Fairweather clocked a time of 4min 4.73sec, finishing 6sec behind winner Katie Ledecky and 2sec out of the medals.
Despite that, it was a display that showed Fairweather’s breakout performance at the Tokyo Olympics, where she was a surprise finalist in the event, was not a fluke.
She swam 4min 2.28sec in her heat in Japan, qualifying fourth.
Her performance in the final at the weekend was 4sec faster than the performance she delivered to finish eighth in the big race in Tokyo.
That has to signify progress for the 18-year-old, who is at just her second world championships.
Ledecky swam a lightning 3min 58.15sec to claim victory in a championship record, which was also the seventh-fastest time in history.
Defending world and Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus, of Australia, is absent from the championships as she focuses on next month’s Commonwealth Games.
However, American Ledecky, widely considered the greatest female swimmer of all time, was pushed closely by 15-year-old Canadian prodigy Summer McIntosh.
McIntosh, who finished fourth in the final in Tokyo last year, remained within 1sec of Ledecky virtually the whole way.
She broke the 4min mark to claim silver in 3min 59.39sec.
Ledecky prevailed, however, to win her 16th world title and add to the 400m freestyle gold medals she won in 2013, 2015 and 2017.
American Leah Smith held off Australia’s Lani Pallister in a tight race for bronze.
Smith finished 0.08sec ahead of Pallister in a time of 4min 2.08sec.
Germany’s Isabel Gose also finished ahead of Fairweather, in a time of 4min 3.47sec.
Earlier (Saturday night NZ time), Fairweather won her heat in 4min 6.00sec, edging Gose on that occasion.
She was one of three to qualify from her heat, while the other five finalists came from the last heat — led by Ledecky’s sub-4min qualification.
Fellow New Zealander Lewis Clareburt also backed up his breakout Olympic performance with a fourth place in the men’s 400m individual medley.
He finished in 4min 10.98sec, although was 3sec off a medal.
Dunedin’s Caitlin Deans was due to race her 1500m freestyle heat last night.
Fairweather races again tonight in the 200m freestyle.
