The Winners: Wiffen, McSharry & 'Team' Help Ireland Celebrate It's Greatest Olympic Games
In a series of articles and related features, SOS takes a look at the 14 nations, athletes and coaches who celebrated at least one gold in the Paris 2024 pool. Today: Ireland
The Winners is the SOS Series that recalls the Paris 2024 campaigns of the 14 nations that left the French capital with at least one gold medal in the pool.
Today: Joint 12th - Ireland, Part 1.
One hundred years ago in Paris, Jack Butler Yeats made history when he won Ireland’s first Olympic medal for ‘The Liffey Swim’. His sport was art: he won a silver medal in the arts and culture competition at the 1924 Games for the depiction of the annual race in the river that flows through the centre of the Republic's capital to its mouth at Dublin Bay.
Hundred years on, the Liffey Swim remains an annual fixture, held on September 7 this year:
Some of the best shots from @DanSheridan2012 and @bennnbrady who were on hand today at the 2024 Liffey Swim 🏊 pic.twitter.com/dYjJum82x4
— Inpho Photography (@Inphosports) September 7, 2024
A month earlier - and a hundred years on from Yeats' silver - Daniel Wiffen was to be found in the chop of the Seine racing his first 10km swim, his first marathon and his first river swim a week after making history in the pool at the Paris La Defence Arena as the first Irishman to claim Olympic swimming gold.
Indeed, setting Yeats and his swim art apart, no Irishman had ever won a medal of any colour in the Olympic wash. Wiffen took home two prizes: gold in the 800m freestyle followed by bronze in the 1500m freestyle.
If Wiffen's historic world titles at the intercalated Doha titles in February this year carry the asterisk of poor governance decisions, though in the Irishman's case with no harmful effect and a positive outcome, then the Paris campaign put all and any lingering questions to rest: when the very best were in the lanes next to him, Wiffen crushed it in the 800m and profited in the 1500m, the colour and pace of his second podium the place where we find the most valuable lessons for times to come.
The guidance of Loughborough performance coaching team of Andi Manley and Michael Peyrebrune and the development curve with coach Martin McGann before them shone through. More on and from those men in the near future.
Add in Mona McSharry's bronze in the 100m breaststroke just 0.31sec shy of the crown, Ellen Walshe making the final of the 400m medley, and a string of swims good enough to get the Irish beyond heats to the next round and Ireland's Paris campaign added up to the best the Emerald Isle has ever delivered in the Olympic pool - and contributed to Ireland's greater medals tally across all sports at any Games in history.
