IT’S FAIR TO say that that we here on the island of Saints and Yerrahs are unfamiliar with Daniel Wiffen’s kind of dominance.
This morning he cruised into the final of the men’s 800m freestyle at the Paris Olympics, posting the competition’s fastest time as he did so. Oh, and he effectively pulled up at the line.
“It’s never comfortable, but I wasn’t at 100 percent”, said Wiffen. “You didn’t see my legs come in at the end so that’s where it is, but holding a good pace, happy with the morning swim and a fast time as well, I’m pretty happy.”
Asked as to what percentage he was motoring at, Wiffen laughed and said, “that’s a tough one to say, we’ll go with 95.”
Wiffen’s Australian opponents in his heat, Elijah Winnington and Sam Short, went out hard, but he calmly and gradually scythed them down. He took the lead at the 500 metre mark and left everyone bobbing about in his wake from there.
He held back his kick for the line, so he has afterburners to thrust in tomorrow’s final if he needs it. Those who have worked for Wiffen say his greatest power is not necessarily in his legs, but in the awesome pulling power of his arms.
Others might look at his remarkable self-confidence as the greatest weapon in his arsenal.
“I’m not going in there with 100 percent effort trying to make the final”, he said. “I’m there to get the job done and hopefully finish it in the final. I said before, any lane has a chance. I’ll be looking at everybody, I’ll be doing my homework tonight, see how everybody swims it, making sure I’ll be one of the best there tomorrow night.
“The time didn’t surprise me at all, I actually thought I’d be a little bit faster, I was only 0.25 off an Olympic record and no Irishman or woman has ever done that. so that would have been pretty cool to get but we’ll save that for tomorrow night.”
That time, by the way, was Wiffen’s third-fastest ever.
Wiffen says the only benefit to posting the fastest time is the fact he will be racing from lane four in tomorrow night’s final, from which he says he can have a good look around at his competition.
That competition is suddenly looking tamed. Aussie Sam Short was deemed one of his biggest medal rivals, but having struggled with illness at last month’s national trials, he shockingly failed to make the final. The 2023 world champion meanwhile, Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui, pulled out of the Games a couple of months ago.
Wiffen’s biggest rivals in tomorrow night’s final will be American Bobby Finke and Italian Gregorio Paltrinieri.
“Any medal is good, it’s my first race here”, said Wiffen, “it’s my first time being in contention for an Olympic medal so I’ll take any medal, whatever colour, and then we got another two races after this.”
Wiffen will race the 1500m in the pool too, before he takes to the Seine for the 10km open water event.
Look hard enough across the rippling water and you might have seen Ireland’s rising tide. Ireland have never before had more than one swimmer make the final of a single Olympic Games, but we qualified two within an hour this morning, as Ellen Walshe followed Mona McSharry and preceded Wiffen in joining the very elite of the elite.
The qualification process for the longer-distance events is necessarily swift: there are no semi-finals so, like Wiffen, Ellen Walshe had to rank among the eight-fastest times across two heats.
She initially made a slow start in the opening butterfly section, lagging seventh at the first turn, before then seguing into the backstroke, her weakest discipline of those being examined. But she clung on, and when she glanced to her left – having been landed awkwardly in lane one – she battled through the water.
“I knew I had 200 to go, I could see the middle of the field and thought, ‘Okay, I just need to turn on the gears and fight’”, said Walshe. “I had a strong finish and I am delighted to go into the final tonight.”
She wasn’t happy with her time of 4:39.97, more than two seconds off her personal best. Resetting that record is her ambition in a final for which Canada’s world record holder Summer Mcintosh is the favourite.
“It was such a relief”, said Walshe of the moment she realised she had made the cut. “The time left my head which I wasn’t too over the moon with, but I have another chance to have a go at this tonight.”
Danielle Hill, meanwhile, took care of her business by placing 16th in the heats of the 100m breaststroke to progress to her semi-finals tonight.
“Pretty cool”, said Wiffen of his team-mate’s results.
He expects more of his own success to follow.
“Armagh won, my birthday is on 14 July, Bastille Day. What is it, 100 years since Ireland competed in Paris? It just seems everything is aligning, doesn’t it?”
