PROFILE GRÁINNE MURPHY:GRÁINNE MURPHY was first taken to a pool when she was just two, her mother Mary's only ambition for her girl that she learn how to swim at an early age. By the time she was six, though, she had long since ditched the kiddies' armbands, by then she was winning Community Games medals in under-eight races. The swimming lessons had gone rather well.
Soon enough Murphy’s own ambition was outgrowing the opposition – and the local pool. When she was 13, then, Mary and her husband Brendan, owners of the Horse and Hound pub in Ballinaboola, Co Wexford, bought a second home in Annacotty, Co Limerick so their daughter could be based near the 50-metre pool at the University of Limerick. All they wanted was for her evident potential to at least have the chance of being realised.
Mother and daughter spent the week in Limerick, returning home at weekends. The sacrifice and commitment was enormous, Mary getting her daughter to 5.20 training each morning, before taking her on to her new school, Castletroy College. Lessons complete, it was time for the day’s second training session, bringing the total number of hours spent at the pool each week to over 20.
Since then, under the guidance of Belgian Ronald Claes, coach at Swim Ireland’s High Performance Centre in Limerick, Murphy has blossomed, her performances last year, not least at the European Junior Championships, exceptional. She won three gold medals and a bronze at the Championships in Prague, making her the most successful swimmer at the event and the first Irish competitor ever to win a European junior swimming title.
Her times were worth noting. In her 400 metres medley win, Murphy touched at 4:40.88 seconds, bettering the long-standing junior mark set by the current Olympic Champion Yana Klochkova, putting her 23rd in the senior world rankings. She was just 16.
In the 400 metres medley she was just 0.8 seconds outside Michelle Smith De Bruin’s Irish senior record, set at the 1996 Olympic Games, but a month later, at the senior World Championships in Rome, Murphy erased another Smith De Bruin mark from the record books – she beat her 13-year-old Irish record, the one that earned Smith De Bruin one of her gold medals in Atlanta, in the heats of the 200 metres Individual Medley.
Murphy finished the season with two European junior, two Irish senior and seven Irish junior records, her achievements earning her the 2009 Texaco Young Sports Star of the Year award.
On to 2010 and the senior European Championships in Hungary. Could she maintain her progress? Well, yes. She posted the second fastest time in the world this year to win silver in the 1,500 metres final in Budapest, smashing her own Irish record – in all, she took 26 seconds off that mark over two swims in the heats and the final.
And Murphy came within 0.05 seconds of bringing home a second medal from Hungary, double world champion Federica Pellegrini pipping her to bronze in the 800 metres freestyle. She also reached the final of the 400 Individual Medley, finishing seventh.
That is the backdrop to Murphy’s success at the European Short Course championships in Eindhoven, the 17-year-old adding two more bronze medals to her collection. Andrew Bree, in 2003, is the only other Irish swimmer to have medalled at the meet.
A gruelling week it was too, the teenager competing in seven events, but she had sufficient reserves of energy to finish third in the 800 metres freestyle on Friday and in the 400 metres freestyle on Saturday, in which she set yet another Irish record.
A consistent record of progress and excellence, then, since she first dipped her two-year-old toes in that New Ross pool. Gráinne Murphy has given the patrons of the Horse and Hound a reason to raise a glass or three.
SECOND BRONZE FOR WEXFORD SWIMMER
GRÁINNE MURPHY, having won her second bronze the week, in the 400 metres freestyle, yesterday finished seventh in the final of the 400 metres individual medley (IM) at the European Short Course Swimming championships in Eindhoven, writes John Kenny.
It was a demanding week as the 17-year-old, still in heavy training, was entered in seven events and while the 400 IM may have been a race too far, she still ended the four-day meet with two bronze medals. Her third-placed finish in Saturday’s 400 freestyle final added to the 800 free bronze she won on Friday, as team-mate Melanie Nocher, who also made the decider, faded to finish fifth.
Italian 400 metres world champion Frederica Pelligrini inexplicably stopped after 50 metres and pulled out of her heat.
Nocher took the race through the halfway mark in the lead and at one stage she and Murphy were dead level at the head of the race. However, out in lane six Hungary’s Agnes Mutina began to overtake the two Irish swimmers while in lane four Spain’s Melanie Costa also pasted them into silver position, but Murphy held onto take the bronze behind Mutina who won in a fast 4,01.25 seconds, with Costa in silver just over a second behind. Murphy grabbed the bronze medal in an Irish record of 4.02.86 seconds. Nocher finished fifth in 4.03.97, her fastest time for the event.
Murphy confirmed she will be in action again next weekend at the Munster Championship at the University of Limerick.
Aisling Cooney swam the 200 metres backstroke after narrowly missing out on the 50 metres backstroke final yesterday, but she too missed out on a place in the final, registering a time of 2:12.91. However, Cooney put in a storming 50 metres backstroke on Saturday registering a time of 27.84 seconds just missing out on the final by three hundreds of a second.
