The 20-year-old Albury university student had made Olympic qualifying times before but needed to make a big drop to even be considered for the national Paralympic team going to Rio this year.

A few days earlier Ward had nearly beaten his own Australian record in the 50-metre breaststroke but now he faced the 100 metres which, unlike the former, is an Olympic distance.

Swimming faster in his heat than he had ever swum before, Ward shaved four seconds off his best time finishing in one minute and 11.55 seconds.

His swim put him three seconds behind 31-year-old Paralympian Rick Pendleton and was so fast it makes him one of the top-10 swimmers in his class in the world.

Only 31 swimmers were picked this year for the Paralympic team and unfortunately Ward was not one of them.

His time classifies him as a priority-four athlete.

Ahead of him are priority twos and threes who are those ranked top-7 and priority ones whore are ranked top-four.

Ward was only a second from being a priority two but is still on the reserves list of swimmers for this year’s Paralympics.

The young swimmer, forever the optimist, said to shave four seconds off his personal best only a month and a half after moving to Melbourne had been a huge achievement.

“The coach there has been working really hard to change my technique,” he said.

“I’d actually gotten really slow for a period of time.”

Ward said this year’s Olympic trials had made him reflective of his trials in the last several years.

“It’s not just four years of training, it’s been four years of early mornings, four years of travelling and getting my parents to drive me around, four years of travelling to different states … I’m grateful to all the people who have been part of it,” he said.

Now Ward is back in training for the Australian short courses in November.

After that he’s aiming for the World Cup next year.