Swimming:Ireland's Grainne Murphy smashed the Irish 800m freestyle record by eight seconds and won her heat in a time of 8:28.91 at the European Swimming Championships in Budapest.
The 17-year-old was the fastest qualifier into tomorrow night’s final where she will face stiff competition from the likes of world record holder Rebecca Adlington, world champion Lotte Friss and Federica Pellegrini, the women's 200m and 400m freestyle world record holder.
Murphy defied her years with an outstanding performance which will give her real belief against tomorrow’s stellar line-up in the final.
The Wexford swimmer was a three-time gold medallist at the Junior European Championships last year in Prague, but she played down any hopes of securing a medal by saying the big guns were saving themselves for the final.
“It was an amazing swim, I’m really happy with my performance, but Lotte (Friss) is well able to go faster in the final so we’ll have to see what happens,” said Murphy, whose previous national record was 8:36.63.
“I have a day’s rest, so my plan is to get as much sleep and rest as possible between now and tomorrow.
“I had a fair idea how fast the others were going to take the race out and what they were trying to do but I just focused on my race which was really, really, good. I started off strong and was able to hold on throughout the whole swim,” added Murphy who will line out in tomorrow’s final from 4pm Irish time.
Earlier in the week she also made the 400m individual medley final and finished seventh.
There was disappointment for Andrew Bree who finished a lowly 18th in the men’s 200m breaststroke – his specialist race. The Irish record holder clocked a time of 2:15.02, five seconds outside his personal best to miss out on the semi-final by one place.
“I’m disappointed, you know, it was just a disappointing morning – didn’t feel as smooth as I’d hoped,” said a disillusioned Bree after the race. “Obviously I like to have more ups than downs, but I can’t dwell on this because if I do, it’s going to affect every other part of my preparations.
“I do have the Commonwealth Games coming up in October and then re-focusing on the big one next year, the World Championships in Shanghai,” added the 29-year-old, who trains full time with the Trojans at Southern California.
Melanie Nocher went in the women’s 100m backstroke but failed to advance. The 22-year-old will go in Friday’s 200m freestyle.
There are no Irish swimmers in action this evening but Murphy will line out in the 200m breaststroke heats tomorrow morning before the evening’s 800m freestyle final, while Ryan Harrison and Barry Murphy will feature in the 100m freestyle heats.