Sinead Farrell

A 15-YEAR-OLD DANIEL Wiffen is training at the Lisburn City Swimming Club and he’s just been ordered out of the pool by his coach.

Daniel Wiffen pictured with his former coach Martin McGann. Inpho / Martin McGann Inpho / Martin McGann / Martin McGann

He has hopes of getting on an Irish team, but he’s not in good form today and he’s not making the times. Now, the set isn’t easy: 19 x 100 metre swims. Four fast. One easy. Four fast. One easy. Until the end. The fast ones must be under 60 seconds. The easy ones really aren’t that easy.

Wiffen gets through the first round of it. Just about. But as he progresses through the reps, the clock starts getting the better of him. He might have big ambitions but he’s not showing the stomach for it. Not today. And his coach Martin McGann is the one holding the whistle. He signals Wiffen out of the water.

“I’d never done that with anyone else,” McGann told The 42 this week as he reflected on Wiffen’s rise to becoming a double world champion.

“I would be harsh and encouraging but I told him to get out.”

This was a test for both the swimmer and the mentor. The pair had been together for a while, and from the first day, Wiffen’s goal was to break a world record. McGann agreed to do his part in reaching that feat, but assured his young student that he would be forever held to his promise. The measure must be remorseless. And now is the time to find out if he’s serious about honouring his word.

Wiffen did as he was told and climbed out of the water. But he couldn’t go far as his twin brother Nathan was also training and their mother Rachel was looking on. McGann expected Wiffen to be livid with the ejection, and warned Rachel that she might be on the receiving end of some spitfire. But for his part, all McGann could do was wait and see the results of the test.

“He came back that evening and the first thing he said was, ‘Martin, I’m sorry.’ And once he said that, I knew we could work together. He was humble enough to come in and realise that it was our common goal to break a world record. He had the humility and the guts to come in, which a lot of the kids don’t do, especially the cocky ones.

“Now, he’s not cocky. He’s just confident and we, as a society, find that uncomfortable. It’s the Americans who do that, not us. But he’s one of the most humble people around.”

Wiffen proposed getting back in the pool to repeat the set again the following day. But another lesson was coming.

“No do-overs in world sport,” was McGann’s reply. “You don’t get a second chance. You have to perform when it’s asked of you, not when it suits. You have to do it on the day when you’re not ready.”

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McGann lives in Doha now where the World Aquatics Championships were held recently. He was there to meet up with old friends from his coaching connections, and to watch Wiffen become a champion in the 800m and 1500m freestyle events.

He’s a world record holder now over 800m after his blazing 7:20.46 at the European Short Course Championships in December.

And at 21, he became the first Irish swimmer to set a new European short-course record over the same distance at the 2022 National Championships.

He swam at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He won his heat in the 1500m freestyle and shattered the Irish record with a swim of 15:07.69. The previous record was 15:16.90.

McGann spoke to Wiffen briefly after his 800m success last week but made a considered effort to give him his space during the championships. They still have a strong relationship but McGann is not his coach anymore, having introduced the Wiffen twins to Andi Manley at Loughborough University while the world was getting to grips with Covid-19. 

Daniel Wiffen holding his gold medal for the Men’s 1500m Freestyle at the World Championships. Andrea Staccioli / INPHO Andrea Staccioli / INPHO / INPHO

Before they headed to Loughborough, and with the world in varying states of lockdown, McGann kept them fit via remote coaching. The Wiffens bought a pop-up pool to put in their back garden and used a bungee cord to act as a form of resistance. McGann, who had moved to Dubai at this point, kept an eye on them through Zoom.

“I was thinking about how I could adapt my coaching to suit this. One of the things I got them to do was get them on their side, have one arm in front and the other in the air. Gravity is then acting on your body. I got them to hold a basketball or football to make it even harder.

“I would be cooking my dinner while they were doing this. It wasn’t an ideal scenario but we built it up so that they were doing one and-a-half hours each in the pool.”

Manley then took over, with McGann recommending that the Wiffens go to Loughborough as a package deal.

“I really believe that a lot of Daniel’s performances is because Nathan is in that squad. He has this threat coming after him. It’s that twin thing. If there is anyone in the world that Daniel does not want to get beaten by, it’s Nathan. They’re siblings and there’s sibling rivalry, but they’re twins as well.” 

The Wiffen boys competed in separate events mostly as they were growing up, but McGann recalls one occasion when they were both in the water for a race at a competition in Bangor. Nathan won and didn’t spare his brother’s feelings in the celebrations.

“It was the 100m Butterfly and the ribbing that Nathan gave Daniel that week. He was MAD but it was great.

“There were times when they would be knocking lumps out of each other.” 

Head and shoulders above the others. Chatty. Funny. Confident, not cocky. Good mentors for the younger members who were coming up behind them at the Lisburn City Swimming Club. 

“I didn’t just want to take down times, I’d want to take stroke counts, stroke rates [speed of the arms] and be able to see at what point the strokes are breaking down.

“The way I train clubs is that everyone has to be able to swim a 200m freestyle well. If you’re a 50m freestyler, you still have to come up to do a 200m. And if you’re a 1500m guy, you have to come down to do the speed of a 200m. It forces the distance guys how to go out fast and it brings them all together.” 

The Wiffens excelled from early on. Overall, they were chowing through 55km to 58km of water per week. The warm-up alone was around 2,500m. Daniel’s mindset is to set a target on the swimmer who’s currently faster and hunt him down. There are also natural elements of his mainframe that make him a strong contender for swimming on the world stage.

“For his age at 16 or 17, he had an adult’s VO2 Max, which is your velocity and oxygen uptake which lends to distance swimming. He was just shy of an adult’s VO2 Max.

“We worked on all the strokes, even the breaststroke which he couldn’t do to save his life. When Daniel started, he had a stroke count of either 23 or 26 strokes per length. That was way too much and he had to get down to 12 with longer push offs.

“He has a unique physiology inside. His engine is just so good that he’s able to hurt more for longer. 

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Wiffen is conquering world swimming at the moment but there are still some creases to be ironed out. His kicking could be better, as could his turns.

‘Fix those turns and he has that world record,’ was McGann’s message to Manley after his gold medal swim in the 1500m at the World Championships.

The Paris Olympics are approaching and Wiffen’s plan is clear: win a gold medal by swimming a world record time. Wiffen isn’t afraid to say that out loud. But there’s still a lot about him that he hasn’t told us.

Only someone who knows how to test him could truly understand his depths.

“What he tells all of us is just a fraction,” says McGann. “A lot of people are saying he talks the talk but isn’t walking the walk because he’s got two fourth places.

“He’ll try different things and fail but that’s ok. It’s only through failing that we learn. Ultimately, he’ll have one of these phenomenal performances. I’ve spent €5,000 on tickets and I’ll be deafening a few people. Please God, it happens in Paris.”

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