JUST BEFORE WALKING into an empty boardroom at the National Sports Campus in Abbotstown, I’m told my one-on-one sit down with Daniel Wiffen is actually going to be a one-on-two.
Daniel’s twin brother Nathan wants to sit in on the interview with his camera, and capture some footage for the brothers’ YouTube channel. And so we sit down and I fix my eyes on Daniel a with self-consciousness that parlays itself into a weird intensity; glueing my gaze to his so I don’t end up outing myself as a total amateur by looking directly down the lens of Nathan’s camera.
Daniel, of course, has no such discomforts. He cannot be said to suffer from any kind of confidence deficiency and a pair of Olympic medals has taught him that fame comes just as easily to him as swimming.
He now can’t walk around home in Magheralin without being stopped, and is regularly stopped in Ireland: he was recently asked to sign someone’s forehead in permanent marker. He’s a star on campus at Loughborough University, where he is in the final year of a degree in Computer Science, a qualification he emphatically says will never be used.
Wiffen is the only current Loughborough student to medal at the 2024 Olympics, and he says his achievement is called out at lectures, and he is stopped for photos on the way to class. The swimming programme, meanwhile, are preparing to hang a large, five-metre-by-two-metre banner of Wiffen’s face above the pool: it will be one of seven celebrating the programme’s highest-achievers.
“I’ll be in the middle, because I’m the best”, says Wiffen.
He is enjoying the spin-off spoils of Olympic success, one of which was an invite to this week’s Dublin premiere of Gladiator II. “I think I was the second-most famous person there after Paul Mescal”, he says, “which is pretty crazy.”
Mescal, he says, congratulated him on his Olympic achievements, and said he watched him win gold in the 800m freestyle. Ireland rarely affords such adulation to swimmers, let alone those only 23 years of age. This all begs a question: does he worry all this new laudatory lifestyle will blunt his competitive edge?
“No, to be honest, all of this is just fun for me”, he says. “I actually just train for fun. The competitiveness comes out of me when I actually step foot in the pool.
“Really, the only reason I’m competitive is because I’m having a lot of fun in the training sessions, so I don’t think I’ll ever leave me.”
The competitiveness blooms during competition, especially around a major international event. It’s at this stage Wiffen enters what he calls “killer mode.”
“It’s just in my head, I get the killer eyes”, he explains. “Say, Nathan’s beside me training and I’m looking at him thinking, ‘I’m going to smash you on this rep.’ Or when I’m in a race, I’m like, ‘I’m not letting you beat me. I’ve worked too hard for this.’
“I said that in a post race interview too, it just came out. I don’t normally let it out of me!
“It’s like a weird mindset, I go into in a hard [training] set, or in a race I want to win badly. I’m staring people out, and also talking to myself in my head, thinking what they might be saying about me, so I can just make up things in my head.”
He is also unafraid to go looking for motivation. Wiffen has always been unafraid to say out loud what most other elite sportspeople believe should be kept to themselves, and he cheerily admits he reads everything written about him. Not just in the press, but every reply on Instagram and every below the line comment on the industry-respected SwimSwam website.
“I love the hate comments, they make me laugh and they make me want to go faster too”, he says.
“I don’t think I need the comment. So I don’t think I need people to say anything about me, I think it’s just like I have this attitude: I just want to beat everybody.
“The comments help. Sometimes I don’t mind them. There are a lot more good comments than bad, especially now. Now people have actually seen me win the Olympics because, they can’t really discredit me, because I’ve won it.”
And if he doesn’t necessarily need motivation, he can still use the inspiration. Wiffen is always on the look-out for ideas to craft his walkouts, and some below-the-line doubters promoted his “phone” theatre when striding out to win the 800m gold in a world record time at the world championship earlier this year.
“Before Doha, people were talking shit about how I can’t win”, he says. “So I dialled them up before I walked out, and I put the phone down on them when I won.”
Wiffen says the most difficult part of re-adjusting to life after Paris was in resetting his goals, but we can now consider them reset. More immediately, he will decide next week whether to compete at next month’s short course (25m pool) world championship in Budapest, but his primary target is the world championships in Singapore next July.
While Wiffen has an 800m world record, he wants to add the world record at the 1500m, and he also wants to add titles at the world short course, the European long course, and the Commonwealth Games to complete a full sweep of gold medals.
That can all be done in this Olympic cycle, before the Big Show in Los Angeles in 2028.
He says he won’t be reprising Paris 2024 by doing the open water swim in 2028 – “because of a schedule switch, and also I don’t want to swim in the California water with all the sharks” – but instead is going to add the 400m freestyle to the 800m and 1500m, and so will aim to become the first swimmer to medal at all three events at a single Olympic Games. Plus, he says he has to “at least” defend his 800m Olympic title.
But those Olympic plans may be complicated by fresh competition, one of whom has just put his camera down on the table.
Nathan, like Daniel, is completing his final year of Computer Science at Loughborough, after which something extraordinary is going to happen: the brothers are going to tread separate paths.
Well, perhaps different diversions wending back around to the same end point.
Nathan is moving to California next summer to enrol at Berkeley, for whom he will have a one-year eligibility to compete in the NCAAs.
“I wanted to go on a different path to what he’s done”, says Nathan, gesturing at his twin brother. “I felt the American route, he can’t touch. Probably because he’s ineligible.”
“He wants to one-up me, basically”, chimes Daniel.
Nathan first focused on backstroke as his brother did freestyle, and the brothers believe it was only Nathan’s delay in swapping to freestyle two years ago that cost him a place in Paris. So are we now trending to the sight of the Wiffen twins racing against each other at the next Olympic Games?
“We will both be on the medal podium”, says Daniel.
And if Daniel is going to compete at the 400m, 800m, and 1500m, which events will Nathan prioritise?
Nathan: “Four years is a long time, I don’t know where I’ll be.”
Daniel: “Definitely the eight or 15, he hasn’t decided whether he will do the 4.”
Nathan: “Maybe the 2 as well.”
Daniel: “Maybe the 2 as well!”
Nathan: “To one-up.”
We may genuinely be looking at the prospect that men’s freestyle swimming at the next Olympic Games will become a carve-up between a pair of one-upping brothers from Magheralin.
This story is only starting.
In my eyes one of the most talented squad members.I think him and Coleman and long will have a huge tournament.
Roy must of had a word in his ear
Time will tell here!
Let’s hope he plays an absolute f”"King stormer in France.
Talented player but useless for Ireland
Against germany he was immense
He is right,has been dirt for Ireland.
I know I’m right. Most of the country is saying it. I need an example of when he stood out and had a man of the match performance for Ireland.
Germany at home was immense.
He was decent but Hoolahan and Long were better
I’d say he’s been a bit selfish, Not fit don’t play, Don’t agree with Roy on that.