Swimmer Maeve is one to watch following Lisbon
SLIGO Swimming Club athlete Maeve Keaney took part at the VIII Meeting Internacional de Lisboa recently and narrowly missed out on a medal.
This prestigious gala took place at the University Stadium Swimming Pool Complex in Lisbon and was attended by 580 swimmers representing 79 clubs from all over Europe.
These included teams from Ireland, France, Italy, Spain and of course host nation, Portugal.
Maeve was one of eight Irish swimmers selected to compete at the event.
All of the Irish swimmers are members of the Swim Ireland Connacht Performance Centre based at Kingfisher NUI Galway which is overseen by Head Coach, Pearse McGuigan.
Maeve was one of two Irish swimmers who managed to secure A final places in all of her events, 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke.
She placed a fantastic 4th overall in the ‘ A’ final of the 100m backstroke in a time of 1: 06.00, narrowly missing out on a bronze medal by just 6 hundredths of a second.
She secured 2nd place going into the ‘ A’ final of the 200m backstroke, but unfortunately wasn’t able to compete in the final itself as the team had to fly back to Ireland that same evening.
Overall, the meet was a great success for all of the Connacht high performance team and was great practice for the 2016 Swim Ulster International/ Dave McCullagh Memorial.
This takes place at the Aurora facility in Bangor, Co. Down this weekend.
The competition is a FINA recognised qualification event for the Olympic Games in Rio and is an IPC sanctioned event.
It is also very important as it is the first event that younger swimmers will have to obtain qualification times for the 2016 European Junior Championships which take part in Hungary in July.
Maeve, along with fellow Sligo Swimming Club swimmers Jade Murphy, Carrie McDaid, Ciara Lynch, David Woods, Peter Mooney, Eanna O’Hara and Thomas Maher, will be looking to post good times at the first major competition of the year.
This is testament to the hard work being put into training at the club by the athletes and their coaching teams, who are hoping for success this weekend.