Daniel Wiffen’s homecoming to Magheralin in Co Armagh – and/or Co Down, take your pick, as it straddles the Border – on Tuesday evening was the biggest thing that happened the village since the Vikings came up the Lagan some1,500 years ago, reckoned Caitriona Hughes.
Hughes, chair of the local community association, pointed to a big old oak log across the road from St Patrick’s Hall, where the celebrations were held, which has been made into a wooden sculpture marking the history of the village.
Sculptor Andrew McCann, who has been working on the piece, has now added five Olympic rings together with the year 2024 and the initials DW.
The Olympic swimming gold and bronze medallist did not mention the Vikings but, in his inimitable way, he knew he had carved his own mark on Magheralin history. “We are a small village but we are now a big place on the map,” Wiffen told the crowd, to great cheers outside the hall.
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Magheralin obviously couldn’t quite rise to the numbers that turned out for the Olympians in Dublin on Monday, but local people weren’t shy in also expressing their pride and delight in Wiffen’s success.
A few hundred of them gathered at the hall with the champion, in his Ireland gear, taking it all in his stride, talking to the press, happily posing for pictures and sharing his achievement at this cheerful cross-community event with the different generations of Magheraliners.
Toni Boden and her daughter Sophia erected an arch of balloons outside St Patrick’s Hall so that it could be used as a backdrop for all the photographs. She was so impressed with Wiffen’s success that she volunteered at her own expense to prepare it.
Wiffen was thrilled with the turnout. “It’s so good to have the whole village, as well as the whole country backing you. It’s amazing to have so many people here,” he said.
He is still recovering from the virus which resulted in his hospitalisation and missing out on carrying the Irish flag during the Olympic closing ceremony, some two days after his 10km open-water swim in the Seine on Friday. Yet he said the local reception had him on a “high”, while adding, “it is so cool, I have not seen so many people turn out to the village hall for such a long time. I can’t wait to celebrate with everybody.”
His plan now is to go on holidays and then return to training in October in preparation for the world swimming championships in December, with his eye on bringing back even more medals to Magheralin.
Wiffen told the crowd that, since taking up swimming, his ambition was to be an Olympic gold medallist.
The parish priest, Fr Feidhlimidh Magennis, recalled about 15 years ago, before he actually took over as PP, attending an official opening of an extension to the church where Wiffen and his twin brother Nathan were altar servers. He remembered Daniel as a gangly youth. “Little did I know at that stage that we had a future Olympian among us,” he said.
Kyle Savage, the Ulster Unionist Party deputy mayor of the local council, who lives a couple of miles up the road from Magheralin, said what Wiffen achieved was “fantastic” and “phenomenal”.
“He has written himself into the history books for decades and generations to come,” he said.
Daniel was joined at the celebration by his parents, Jonathan and Rachel, his twin and his other brother Ben.
It has been full throttle since the Wiffen family returned to Ireland. Even after the big homecoming in Dublin and on the way back to Magheralin when they stopped for petrol near Lusk, the Olympian and Nathan “were marauded” with well-wishers, said Daniel’s father Jonathan.
“What was supposed to be a simple petrol stop took us half an hour,” he added.
“I think we were in a bubble in Paris and it was only when we came back that we realised the whole country was behind us.”
