Barry Murphy has won a bronze medal at the European Short Course Swimming Championships in Herning, Denmark. The 28-year-old follows Grainne Murphy, Melanie Nocher and Sycerika McMahon as the fourth medallist for Ireland at these championships in four years.
Barry came out of this morning’s 50m Breaststroke heats as the sixth fastest qualifier and following the semi-final earlier this evening where he swam the exact same time as the heat, 26.86, was ranked eighth overall.
Knowing that he would be swimming in the outside lane Murphy knew he would need to be first to the wall at the 25m mark or with the leaders to have a chance at a medal; he started strong clocking the fastest first 25 metres of the ten swimmers in the pool. He then continued to push for the last 25 metres knowing a medal was in sight finally touching in 26.56 to claim the 50m breaststroke Bronze medal in 26.56, his first at a major championship.
Speaking after the race Murphy said “I’m really delighted; I knew I was in with a shout off the rankings and the times I posted during the summer, so I tried to keep my cool all day and execute my plan for the swim. It came down to hundreds of a second for the medal and thankfully I got my hand on the wall to secure the Bronze.”
The Dubliner is one of 20 full time swimmers that train’s at Swim Ireland’s Performance Centre at the National Aquatic Centre.
Damir Dugonjic of Slovenia was the gold medallist in the event in 56.21.
Fiona Doyle finished her championship with an impressive 14th place finish in the 100m breaststroke. Doyle was sixth in the first heat with a time of 1:06.77. Russia’s Yuliya Efimova continued her good form in the breaststroke events finishing as the fastest seed finishing in a new championship record of 1:03.27.
Murphy will be back in the pool tomorrow along with Bethany Carson, Andrew Meegan while Shani Stallard returns following a rest day today.
Swim Ireland NAC Performance Centre swimmer Andrew Meegan continued his record breaking spree smashing the Irish senior 1,500m record by almost 10 seconds this morning.
The 23 year old had lowered the record to 15:11.69 at Irish Nationals earlier this month bettering his previous record of 15:13.53 set in 2012. Today he swam a time of 15:00.88 and will no doubt be swimming under the 15 minute mark in the very near future.
Speaking after the race Meegan said, “It was a good swim. It felt good throughout but I possibly went out a bit slow at the start, there are a few things to work on for the next time so that’s a good thing but I was definitely happy with how it went.”
Bethany Carson swam her third lifetime best of the meet with a 1:00.50 in the 100m Butterfly while Brendan Hyland was just off his best time in the 200m butterfly clocking 1:59.86.
