Gavin Cooney reports from La Defense Arena, Paris

MONA MCSHARRY WILL swim again in tonight’s semi-finals of the 200m breaststroke in Paris, having cruised through this morning’s heat, ranking seventh of the 16 qualifiers. 

She finished third in her heat in a time of 2:23.98, her third-fastest time 200m time ever. That heat was won by South Africa’s Tatjana Smith, the gold medal winner who stood above McSharry on the podium after Monday’s 100m final. 

“Honestly, the mind was more tired than the body”, reflected McSharry after her heat and a whirlwind 36 hours. 

“It’s just been a lot and yesterday was just a chill day for me. I was trying my best not to expend too much energy mentally and this morning I was definitely a bit quiet but I think I’m always like that going into a 200.

“I went to bed around 4:30 or 5am [on Monday] but I slept in until 10:30 so I got a good six hours’ of sleep. It just took a while for my mind to calm down but it was good.” 

McSharry hasn’t fully engaged with the reaction to her bronze medal glory, and has yet to parse the blizzard of messages on Instagram. Nor has she watched the final back yet. 

“I watched back a couple of clips of my post interview and I started crying, and I was like ‘Oh right, I’m going to have to leave that until after we’re done!’ But I’ll review everything after I’m done racing.” 

She certainly isn’t finished racing. Tonight she will aim to qualify for tomorrow’s 200m final, while she will also race in a relay later this week. The 100m is her best distance, though she is showing outstanding form at 200m, having met the Olympic qualifying time with a 2:22.49 at a relatively low-key meet in Canada a month before the Games. That ranked McSharry seventh in the world, so a spot in tomorrow’s final is a realistic ambition. 

“I want to make the final in the 200. If I make it back into the semis, that’s better than what I did at the last Olympics so I’m just trying to take it step by step and see what happens.

“If I can get into the final it will be the same process as the 100, just race with the other seven people and see how up there I can get.” 

While the swimming has provided a string of nights of raucous entertainment in Paris, a shadow has been cast by the Chinese doping scandal that was broken by the New York Times in the lead-up to the Games. The Times revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers failed an anti-doping test seven months before the Tokyo Olympics, but protocol was broken as the failed tests were not made public and the swimmers were not provisionally suspended pending the outcome of an investigation and potential appeal. 

The Chinese Anti-Doping Agency subsequently cleared the athletes to compete at the Games, saying the athletes had unknowingly ingested the banned substance TMZ through food contamination. The World Anti-Doping Agency chose not to challenge the decision, for which they have received intense criticism. 

McSharry was beaten to the silver medal on Monday night by a Chinese swimmer, Qianting Tang, though she was not one of the 23 swimmers to fail tests before Tokyo. 

Asked whether any Chinese swimmers should be allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics, McSharry demurred. 

“I obviously don’t agree with doping but I haven’t really done a lot of research on what happened with that because it’s very much out of my control, so I just kind of leave it parked where it is”, she said. “There’s not a lot I can do other than probably get worked up about it so I just don’t think about it, honestly.”