“Well,” says Daniel Wiffen, “I think if I am going to win the World Championships in the summer, I am going to have to break the world record.”
Wiffen has been talking like no Irish swimmer before him. Well, not in his lifetime anyway. His evenly modulated voice has no hint of bravado, no sense of grandstanding, or attention seeking. Computing the nuts and bolts of what he must do in Japan is like taking the inventory for success.
It’s as if Wiffen is thinking aloud, tossing out thoughts, letting the ambitious words fall and make what impact they may. Then, it is about not fearing the consequences.
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Knowing his competitors, their times, his times, it is not a stretch to conclude that the world record at the championships is probably going to be one of the 1,500m casualties.
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“That’s my goal this year, to have a great world championship and be on the podium for Ireland and maybe even hear a national anthem,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it played at a swimming competition. That would be pretty cool.”
It would be just. Wiffen would never have heard the anthem because it has never been played in the years he has been alive, never mind competitively swimming.
Michelle Smith was the last Irish swimmer to have stood on a podium at Olympic level in Atlanta 1996, where she won three gold medals, five years before Wiffen was born.
At 21, he is an athlete who has been getting faster and faster. Not unlike track and field’s Rhasidat Adeleke, who recently became the first Irish woman to break the 50-second barrier for 400 metres, Wiffen is redrawing boundaries in the pool.
Both are athletes that have recently emerged to excel at events in which Ireland have had no strong tradition. They have started to win by punching up into world level times and most encouragingly, both are promising that there is more to come.
Over the last two years Wiffen has gone from carving generous chunks out of long-distance Irish records to last weekend in the Stockholm Open, where he swam the world’s fastest time this year at 1,500 metres and third fastest in the world at 800m.
Over 30 long course lengths, he knocked over 15 seconds off his Irish record to post 14:34.91, not just the fastest time in the world this season but just outside the European record of 14:33.10. The world record stands at 14:31.01. Anything under 15 minutes is considered world class.
“Oh yeah, I’m definitely pleased,” he says. “It’s setting up to be a good summer. The 1,500m was the most pleasing, the others I still have to work on a lot more. But the 1,500m, I think I can still get faster.
“I guess I’m feeling very confident from my results. I do think I need to start training, not harder but smarter because I’m definitely not finished on the times I want to go in the summer. I still think I’ve got a lot left.
“I think I can (shave off more seconds). I do think my technique is still not great. But my times have improved so there’s a lot of different areas I can improve and take off more.”
Wiffen is ranked world number one over both distances and is one of the four fastest men to ever compete over the 1,500m event. Less than four seconds off the 1500m world record, he is also among the elite 800 metre swimmers. Last week his 800m Irish record swim of 7:44.45 beat Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist, Mykhaylo Romanchuk, into the silver medal position, the Ukrainian finishing in 7:47.12.
“Yeah, definitely progression,” he says. “The upward curve started when I moved to Loughborough. What I’m doing here is obviously working. I think it will continue to work.
I think that’s what builds in the confidence to race fast. I’m doing sessions that I’ve never heard of people ever doing. But I am doing them
“To be honest I’m still very young. I’m not anywhere near my peak for swimming, I hope. The peak age is about 25, so I’ve got another four years basically. I think the training that we are doing at the moment is so good, especially for me. It just works really well.”
Where most people have a love, hate relationship with dogging out the lengths, Wiffen’s is all one way. It is all love. The yardage, the times, the rest periods and the repeat 10 times, he loves the challenge of the grind more than he loves racing.
The harder the session the more he chews on it and the more he comes back for more. Why, because it has worked so well. Some self-discovery has also come into play. His body and mind have been able to consume the extreme workloads without encountering any negative reaction.
Since he arrived at Loughborough University, where he is a student, and began in the pool with a group of swimmers who are international medal winners, his performances have been consistently improving.
British squad swimmers also sometimes jump in the pool with his group. There is a level of excellence that is understood. If the sessions he does do not break him, it will improve him. He says, over his distances, they are the best training group in Europe.
“Now that I’m going quite fast, I’m getting tested in sessions that are pretty much impossible to complete,” he says. “But I’m going in with an open mind and trying to go as fast as possible. A lot of these sessions I’ve been given I’ve ended up doing pretty well in them.
“I think that’s what builds in the confidence to race fast. I’m doing sessions that I’ve never heard of people ever doing. But I am doing them. I mean in terms of how tough they are and the times I’m posting.”
At the heart of what Wiffen has achieved is the overlying notion that the real importance of being ranked the best in the world, is that it allows him to understand how much more he can give. The experience of winning and positing has opened his mind.
Slaughtering the Irish record marks at 400m, 800m and 1500m for the past 24 months, has been a natural evolution towards now eyeing up world record times.
Beating Olympic medallists into second place, racing fast has had the permissive effect of thinking bigger. It has validated his talent and hardened ambition. But there is no pausing to bask in the warm feeling of being so fast in Stockholm last weekend.
“I’ll definitely take in the (1500m) swim,” he says. “I don’t want to say I’m looking past it because it was such a great time.” But ideally, I want more from myself. That’s why I am going to get in the pool tomorrow and train even harder than I ever have.
“My goal is that Olympic gold, that World record that world championship and I think I am going to keep going and going until I hit them. Then when I hit them, I think that’s when I’ll have some reflection on what I’ve done. Then I’ll probably think ‘my god I’ll go for another one.’”
Right now, it is all just as simple as that.
