Swim stars
MCSHARRY AND FLANAGAN EXCEL AT EVENTS:
GRANGE swimming sensation Mona McSharry is excelling at the LEN European Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Yesterday, Wednesday, evening she was competing in the Women’s 100 metres Breaststroke final. She earned her place in the decider thanks to fine swims in Tuesday’s morning heat and evening semi-final.
Placed joint-second in her heat, McSharry’s time of 1:06.97 was the third time in a month that she has posted a time under the FINA ‘A’ time for Tokyo 2021.
The University of Tennessee student progressed to the semi-final ranked joint-10th. Her time was just 0.99 seconds slower than the fastest heat time of 1:05.98, set by Italy’s Arianna Castiglioni.
McSharry was third in her semi-final – touching the wall in 1:06.42 and being the sixth fastest swimmer of the semi-finals.
This marked the fourth time – in four weeks – that she has smashed the FINA ‘A’ target for Toyko.
The 100 metres breaststroke is the category that McSharry has already earned an Olympic Consideration Time for – last month she twice broke the target of 1:07.7 at the Swim Ireland Irish National Team Trials, setting a new Irish senior record in the process.
Speaking after her semi-final on Tuesday, McSharry said: “I feel great! If you had told me I would swim 1:06 this year, I’d have been over the moon, and now I’ve just done two 1:06 swims in a few hours and, I don’t want to say easily, but comfortable enough that I know I could do it again.”
“It just gives me so much confidence in the build-up to the Olympics,” she enthused. Speaking about what it’s like to be back competing for Ireland, McSharry added: “It’s an indescribable feeling. Racing NCAAs in the US, I got a little bit of that feeling of racing on the big stage, but Europeans is different again and I think you forget just how good it is to be racing here.”
On Monday, meanwhile, she was part of the Swim Ireland women’s 4x100 metres freestyle relay team that set a new Irish record. McSharry, Danielle Hill, Victoria Catterson and Erin Riordan swam 3 minutes 44.37 seconds, taking almost three seconds off a the national record that stood since 2009. McSharry and her relay teammates finished fifth in their heat and 12th overall.
While the men’s 4x100 metres freestyle relay team were also 12th overall and didn’t qualify for the final, both they and the team that McSharry is part of have advanced their chances of qualifying in their respective relay categories for the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Swim Ireland’s goal for these championships is to qualify one or more of Ireland swimming relays team for Tokyo.
It is expected that McSharry will be involved in another relay event this Sunday as part of the Irish quartet that competes in the Women’s 4x100 metres Medley Relay.
When McSharry previously swam for Ireland at an international event – the 2019 European Short Course Swimming Championships in Glasgow – she secured bronze in the Women’s 50 metres Breaststroke.