Irish pair continue to make waves
MONA McSHARRY has secured her third finals appearance at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, making it a clean sweep across the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke events.
McSharry, who was fifth in both the 100m and 200m breaststroke finals earlier this week, touched in 30.57 for fourth place in last night’s semi-final.
The time, which was faster than her morning swim of 30.72, saw the Sligo woman advance in sixth place overall.
McSharry commented after the race: ‘It’s great, I think being able to go back-to-back racing in multiple events and being able to make it back to multiple finals is really encouraging, and look I get to go again, the 50m’s just a splash and dash so it’s a nice one to finish on.’
The final will take place today at 4:09pm.
Earlier, the 800m freestyle world champion Daniel Wiffen confirmed his place in the 1500m freestyle final, the Co Down swimmer’s third final of the week.
The 1500m final will take place today at 4.16pm, and will be without 2023 World Champion Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia who finished 17th in 15:09.02.
Winning his heat in 14:54.29, Wiffen is the sixth seed for today’s final, just eight-tenths of a second inside the top eight. The Magheralin man has a best time in the event of 14:34.91.
Speaking after the race Wiffen said ‘I’m good, I tried to take it as easy as possible and just pace it to get back, I’m in sixth position going in, I could have missed it by 0.8 there, so I’m pretty happy with that, I did what I wanted to do, it was fun for me’.
The 22-year-old knew exactly what he needed to do going in the final heat of four, admitting afterwards: ‘I knew exactly my pace, I think I’m getting quite good at hitting a certain pace in training and in my warmup I knew what was going to make it back. To be honest, it’s faster than what I thought was going to make it back, but I’m just happy to be on the right side of it’.
Regarding this afternoon’s final, Wiffen said: ‘I’m just going to try and go in with the same attitude, pace it how I want to pace it, post a good time and hopefully get on the podium’.
Also, in action, Erin Riordan closed out her championships with a first individual race at world championship level, in the 50m freestyle. The National Centre Dublin swimmer clocked 26.26 which had her in 46th place overall.
Later today, Ireland’s men’s 4x100m medley relay will take to the blocks seeking an Olympic Games spot. The top 16 times from teams achieved at the 2023 World Championships and today’s race will confirm places for Paris. The Ireland men currently sit in 13th place and will look to improve their time of 3:35.03 from last year. Ireland women’s 4x100m medley relay quartet are not in Doha and will learn their Olympic fate by the end of today. The team, also in 13th place from the 2023 Championships, have a time of 4:01.25.