No two journeys to the Paralympic Games are the same, but last September the chances of Irish swimmer Barry McClements competing in Paris appeared to run aground.
The 22-year-old, who had his right leg amputated above the knee at just 10 months old having been born with fibular hemimelia, suffered a femur break when his prothesis came undone while out walking.
Two friends who were with him at the time had to help the Newtownards man off the ground and initially it was believed surgery would be required, with some doctors suggesting he might not be back in the pool until Spring.
But with the Paralympic Games taking place in August, McClements didn’t have the luxury of such time out of the water.
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“My artificial leg came off, it just wasn’t fitted correctly, it’s not supposed to come off [like that],” recalls McClements. “I was walking down a steep hill and I think the momentum did it, my femur was fractured just at the bottom.
“The doctors hadn’t experienced anything like that with a stump. Some of them were saying I might not be back until April. I was crying and stuff, obviously.”
But fast-forward nine months and McClements was in Dublin on Tuesday as one of the first seven athletes to be confirmed on the Team Ireland plane for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, which take place from August 28th-September 8th.
It is expected a team of between 30-35 athletes will ultimately travel to France – though so much is still contingent on qualifying events over the weeks ahead.
“It healed way faster than they expected and didn’t need any surgery – they had been talking about screws and that,” continues McClements.
“The doctors were saying, ‘Stay out of the pool’ but I was like, ‘I can’t not swim.’ I was only doing 15 minutes or so, just my arms really, trying not to move my legs – that was up until the end of November. It wasn’t until the end of December that I could start really building up.”
And his recovery has gone, well, swimmingly. He won bronze in the 100m butterfly at the European Para Swimming Championships in Madeira in April and also swam a personal best in the 100m backstroke at that event. He had previously claimed bronze in the 100m backstroke at the Commonwealth Games in 2022, so his form has been building steadily since the Tokyo Games.
“I got a PB in the 100m backstroke and was only 0.05 off it in the butterfly [at the Europeans] so that took a lot of stress off for this year,” he says. “I was worried a lot about fitness and things like that.”
And now the target is to see if he can make a podium in Paris, for what will be his second Paralympic Games.
“Tokyo for me was about making the finals, getting to those big finals and experiencing it. I did it in the 100m backstroke in Tokyo and I really wanted it in the 100m fly as well and I was left disappointed.
“But my training wasn’t very good in the lead-up to that – and that was on me. I didn’t show up when I should have shown up and things like that.
“Again, the immaturity that came along with it. Now I’ve put the work in and I’m going to continue to put the work in. I think I’m just more mature than I was in Tokyo, I’ve got a European medal to my name now and a Commonwealth medal. I’m more motivated, really.”
Of the seven athletes announced on Tuesday, six were swimmers – with Ellen Keane, Nicole Turner, Róisín Ní Riain, Dearbhaile Brady and Deaten Registe also confirmed to represent Ireland in the pool at the Paralympics.
It will be Keane’s fifth and final Paralympic Games, with the Clontarf swimmer retiring after Paris. She was a gold medal winner in Tokyo and picked up silver in the 100m breaststroke at the European Championships in April.
Brady and Registe will be competing at their first Paralympics, Turner will be appearing at her third while Ní Riain will be swimming at her second Games.
Colin Judge will represent Ireland for the second time in table tennis having also competed at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
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