Sunday, 12 February 2012:

There was much less at stake this time, but veterans Geoff Huegill and Michael Klim picked up their long-running rivalry exactly where they left off at the NSW championships in Sydney.

Competing together for the first time in almost six years, both comeback swimmers admitted to feeling the pain in Sunday night's 100m butterfly final as Klim finished fifth and Huegill sixth.

With both using the race as part of preparations for next month's Olympic trials in Adelaide, Klim joked it was a case of deja vu for the pair, who finished second and third behind Swede Lars Frolander in the final at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

That day Klim finished 0.04 seconds ahead of Huegill to claim the silver medal and eerily there was exactly the same margin almost 12 years on with Klim (53.53) edging Huegill (53.57).

"I was very lucky, it was a good race actually," Klim said.

"Obviously we're both struggling. There were pianos dropping all over the place at the end there, but it was good to be back on this stage and racing next to Skippy.

"We had a bit of a laugh in the warm-up ... 11 years ago we had the hearts pulled out of our chests here so this is a bit of deja vu.

"It's always good to have fun and we always have close races no matter what."

Chris Wright (52.60) won the race ahead of Jayden Hadler (53.09) and Nick D'Arcy (53.33).

Commonwealth Games champion Huegill admitted he was disappointed with his time but put the meet in perspective after a disrupted preparation because of a virus picked up in January.

"My whole approach to this meet was just to use it as a training run, we haven't had the best preparation leading into it," Huegill said.

"To do two solid swims of 53 (seconds), everything's on track."

AAP