Consider first the strange anomaly of any country, in any sport, boasting one of the fastest names in history, and still yet to win a medal on the world championship stage. Because surely now that is going to change.
There can only be one first Irish medal winner at the World Swimming Championships, the long course edition unquestionably the premier swimming event outside of the Olympics. Just as there can only be one first Irish world record holder in swimming, and we already know his name is Daniel Wiffen.
It’s exactly two months now since the 22-year-old Wiffen broke the only world record at the European Short Course Championships, on the outskirts of Bucharest, winning his third gold medal of the week in the 800m freestyle.
Wiffen’s winning time of 7:20.46 took a full three seconds off the previous mark set by Australian Grant Hackett. This was no ordinary world record, given it was the longest-standing one in the swimming books and belonged to Hackett, a seven-time Olympic medal winner (including three gold) since July 2008.
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Hackett was also wearing an early version of the shiny full-body swimsuit, before they were outlawed at the start of 2010, given their undisputed advantage in the watery slip stream. No wonder the Australian was one of the first to pass on his congratulations to the young man from the small village of Magheralin in Co Armagh.
“Ever since I was younger, my aim has been to break a world record,” Wiffen said of that feat, which he celebrated with a few slices of pizza back at the Irish team hotel. “I’ve always loved swimming, have watched everything since I was 12, 13, always looked up to the world record holders. Because they’re obviously the fastest person ever, and that’s what I wanted to become.
“Maybe when I was younger that was very unrealistic. You can ask any of the pathway coaches in Ireland, they wouldn’t even say I’d be good nationally when I was younger, but I just had the determination.”
Now, Wiffen joins Mona McSharry in another race of sorts to write their names into Irish sporting history, to go where no Irish swimmer has gone before, as the spotlight at the 21st edition of the World Aquatics Championships in Doha turns to the swimming pool in the coming eight days.
Such is the change in the Irish swimming psyche it will be disappointing if one or both don’t win a medal. Maybe even more. Both are targeting three events: Wiffen the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle, McSharry the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke.
What is certain is things have already changed significantly in the four decades and then some since the late Peter Byrne of this parish reported on that good day for the Irish swimmers in the pool at the 1976 Montreal Olympics when “nobody drowned”. Harsh as that was.
The truth is the record kept on repeating itself, on the Olympic and World stage, bar the uncomfortable exception of Michelle Smith de Bruin, the first and last Irish swimmer to have stood on a podium at Olympic level in Atlanta 1996, where at age 26 she won three gold medals and one bronze.
[ Daniel Wiffen becomes first Irishman to break swimming world recordOpens in new window ]
[ Mona McSharry: ‘I’d come to the conclusion that I hated swimming’Opens in new window ]
Two years later De Bruin was banned for four years for tampering with a doping sample, and she never swam competitively again.
There have been other moments of hope before and since: Gary O’Toole with his European Championship silver in the 200m breaststroke in 1989, then Shane Ryan, with his 50m backstroke bronze at the 2018 World Short-Course Championships.
Then the more recent and paradigm shift of McSharry, the Sligo swimmer who made the Olympic final in Tokyo in the 100m breaststroke as a 20-year-old, the first Irish swimmer to reach that stage since De Bruin, and who followed that up a year later with bronze at the World Short-Course Championships in Abu Dhabi, in December 2021.
So to Doha. A backlog of World Championships (Covid-19 being to blame) has pushed the event into an Olympic year for the first time, with the popular SwimSwam website already declaring it “the strangest World Championships in several generations”, given the number of high-profile swimmers who won’t be there, with the Paris Olympics just over five months away.
“This Doha meet is going to be all over the place in terms of who’s rested, who’s training through, and who even shows up . . . There are going to be swimmers in finals that most of us have never heard of.”
Most of the top US swimmers are staying at home, given their Olympic Trials are coming up in June, including Katie Ledecky, who at last summer’s World Championships in Fukuoka, won a record 16th individual gold, surpassing the record of Michael Phelps.
Wiffen and McSharry both came within touching distance of a medal in Fukuoka, McSharry relegated from second to fifth in a frantic finish to the 100m breaststroke – finishing behind four Olympic champions, just 0.13 of a second off bronze – before Wiffen finished fourth in both the 800m and 1,500m freestyle.
The absence of some top names makes that medal quest somewhat easier this time, though not exactly straightforward. McSharry is ranked second in the 100m breaststroke behind Ruta Meilutyte from Lithuania, who won gold in Fukuoka; Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa, who won silver, and Lydia Jacoby of the US, who won bronze, are not competing.
If I can reproduce what I did in six days across eight days, then I think I will be competitive in all three
— Daniel Wiffen
Wiffen is ranked second in the 800m and third in the 1,500m, in both events behind Ahmed Hafnaoui, the 21-year-old from Tunisia who won double gold in Fukuoka. Wiffen is only ranked ninth in the 400m, his first event up on Sunday, also behind Hafnaoui, but this is the event that presents the most scope for improvement.
“I used to focus on two out of three, but at the European Championships I got three golds by focusing on all three,” Wiffen said. “That was only a six-day meet, the World Champs is an eight-day meet, so you have more time to recover.
“If I can reproduce what I did in six days across eight days, then I think I will be competitive in all three, yeah.”
Wiffen won’t have to worry about Robert (Bobby) Finke from the US, or the Australian Sam Short, who filled the other two podium positions in both the 800m and 1,500m in Fukuoka.
What is certain is that Wiffen and McSharry have been on a mostly upward trajectory since Tokyo, Wiffen is part of the elite training group at Loughborough University, McSharry in her final year at the University of Tennessee.
“It’ll still be very competitive,” McSharry said of Doha. “But not with the same depth we see at the Olympics, which will be good. It’ll give me an opportunity to race fast, get a good middle lane, and experience all that.”
And not unrealistically for both Wiffen and McSharry, to also experience standing on the medal podium at the World Swimming Championships, in Olympic year, everything else from there being Irish sporting history.
For the rest of the 13-strong Irish swimming team, Paris qualifying times are the chief goal, both the men’s 400m medley relay and women’s 400m freestyle relay also looking to seal their Olympic berth.
Doha Finals Schedule (should Wiffen and McSharry progress)
Sunday: Men’s 400m freestyle
Tuesday: Women’s 100m breaststroke
Wednesday: Men’s 800m freestyle
Friday: Women’s 200m breaststroke
Sunday: Women’s 50m breaststroke; Men’s 1500 freestyle
Irish Swimming Team in Doha
(Event/Personal best)
Victoria Catterson: 100m Freestyle/55.56; 200m Freestyle/1:59.74
Eoin Corby: 200m Breaststroke/2:12.24
Thomas Fannon: 50m Freestyle/21.95
Conor Ferguson: 50m Backstroke/24.95; 100m Backstroke/54.01
Maria Godden: 50m Backstroke/ 28.98; 100m Backstroke/1:01.32; 200m Backstroke/2:12.19
Darragh Greene: 50m Breaststroke/27.54; 100m Breaststroke/1:00.39
Max McCusker: 100m Butterfly/52.96
Mona McSharry: 50m Breaststroke/30.29; 100m Breaststroke/1:05.55; 200m Breaststroke/2:25.49
Erin Riordan: 50m Freestyle/25.53
Shane Ryan: 100m Freestyle/49.04; 50m Butterfly/23.77
John Shortt: 200m Backstroke/1:58.63
Daniel Wiffen: 400m Freestyle/3:44.35; 800m Freestyle/7:39.19; 1500m Freestyle/14:34.91
Grace Davison: 400m Freestyle relay
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