Havertown’s Ryan shoulders relay load despite injury
TOKYO » A month before the Olympics, things weren’t adding up for Shane Ryan.
His training, in sight of his second Olympic Games in Tokyo, was strong. He was coming off the strongest season of his career. But the work he’d put in and the information the stopwatch was putting out about his performances didn’t measure up.
“I’m in such good shape, and it’s like, why am I going these times?,” Ryan said Tuesday night. “And why is it so much harder than it’s supposed to be?”
The answer, Ryan would find out four weeks before the Olympics, was a set of shoulder injuries. First his right, a nagging issue for years that devolved into causing pain down to his wrist and hand. Then his left, likely strained while overcompensating. Eventually, the Havertown native swimming for Ireland was getting no purchase on his strokes at all. When he did get any propulsion, it came with pain.
His limitations forced a difficult decision on the eve of the Games: After making the semifinals to finish 16th in Rio, and entering the upper echelon of sprint backstrokers in the intervening five years, Ryan decided to pull out of the 100 backstroke in Tokyo. He still has the 100 butterfly prelims Thursday night and he anchored the Irish men’s 800 free relay in the country’s first relay in 49 years and first ever men’s relay.
“It was one of the most stressful decisions of my life, scratching out of that 100 back,” Ryan said. “I went 53.8 with really serious injuries, so just imagine if I didn’t have them. I would be absolutely flying.”
Ryan had a chance to replicate his semis feat in Tokyo. He posted the 36th fastest time in the world over the Olympic qualification period dating to March 1, 2019. But when you subtract retirements and non-entrants in countries with more than two qualifying times, he was just outside the top 20.
Ryan has become a fixture on the international scene. A three-time Daily Times Men’s Swimmer of the Year at Haverford High and Penn State grad, he has bronze medals in the 50 backstroke, a non-Olympic event, at the 2018 World Short Course Championships, 2018 European Long Course Champs and 2019 Short Course Euros. He was one of the standouts in the International Swimming League season last fall for the Toronto Titans with his all-purpose sprinting. He’s almost become the face of Irish swimming, which he aspired to when he made the nationality switch before Rio.
To have all that threatened on the eve of the Games by injury was difficult. Even more painful was not knowing the exact physiological reason why, bringing a cascade of questions.
“It’s really scary,” Ryan said. “And it got to a point where I didn’t know what it was. That was the most frustrating thing. We put in so much good work.”
Like he often has, Ryan adapted. He anchored the men’s 800 free relay Tuesday night with what he reckons was the first 200 free he’s swum in competition since he was 16. The Irish men went from the 16th seed to 14th place, surpassing Poland and the disqualified Hungarian team. Ryan split a respectable 1:49.08 off the end of the foursome with Jack McMillan, Finn McGeever and Brendan Hyland.
The overall experience in Tokyo is much different than Rio. But given all that the world has gone through the last year, different doesn’t mean better or worse.
“It’s definitely different because we have to wear the masks and all the regulations, the spit tests we need to do every single day,” Ryan said. “But it’s an absolute honor and privilege to be here with such a large team, the biggest team we’ve ever sent. The last Olympics, there was only three swimmers, so it’s great to have some of my best friends here, and we’ll cherish this for life.”
The team aspect is part of what is driving Ryan. He shied away from the 100 back in part because he didn’t want to incapacitate himself and hinder the relay. After the relay swim, Ryan got to watch countryman Daniel Wiffen set an Irish record in the men’s 800 freestyle to finish 14th. The night before, Mona McSharry booked an Olympic final spot in the women’s 100 breast, the first for the program since 1996.
Those kinds of developments are what Ryan aspired to when he made the switch to the nationality of his parents’ birth. He weathered criticism, as a college star who qualified for U.S. Olympic Trials in 2012, for those that begrudged him taking a perceived shortcut to the Games.
But once he moved to Ireland and became enmeshed in their national and athletic culture, it became about
more than Ryan’s personal goals. Getting a nine-person delegation to Tokyo after just three qualified for Rio is a major source of pride and evidence of significant growth.
Aided by the steady source of income from ISL and his support network, Ryan said he’s ready to push on to be part of the next step in Paris in three years.
“If I had to make the decision again, I’d make it all over again,” Ryan said. “I’ve made so many new friends. I’m one of the fastest backstrokers in the world. I love the decision, and one of the
main things is I’m definitely going to be staying in Ireland for a while. I’ll be going for the next Olympics as well. I definitely want to bring up the future of Swim Ireland and inspire the younger kids, being around them, doing swim clinics for younger kids, because when I first came over here, there really wasn’t anything like that. There wasn’t a big figurehead for Ireland in that, and I would love to be that with Brendan and Jack. We love the sport, the swimming community in Ireland is just absolutely amazing.”