SWIMMING:SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sycerika McMahon took a hat-trick of gold medals in what turned out to be a problematical first day at the National Championships at the National Aquatic Centre in Dublin yesterday.

The finals, which were due to start at 4.30pm, were delayed by a hour last night as there was a knock on from the morning heats which got under way at 9.30, but which didn’t finish until 2pm as NAC staff were forced to clean the pool as two competitors were sick into the water.

It meant the finals were put back an hour, but the delay didn’t seem to phase Belfast’s McMahon, who turned in some terrific performances in the evening session.

The Leander teenager showed her emerging talent to take gold in the 200m butterfly in two minutes 51.82 seconds, and 200m freestyle (2.00.79), beating Olympian Melanie Nocher to the gold in the final. She then added the 50m breaststroke title (32.74) for good measure.

The 200m freestyle final was expected to be a shoot-out between McMahon, Nocher and Gráinne Murphy, who decided to withdraw from the final despite easily making the decider.

The 18-year-old has already qualified for the World Championships in Shanghai in July and her coach, Ronald Claes, explained that her absence from the final is due to the fact that she is in the middle of heavy endurance training building up to the meet in China.

“Gráinne is in the middle of heavy endurance training as she builds up to the world championships in China, which is her priority this year,” said Limerick high performance coach Claes.

“We are using the Dublin meet in an effort to sharpen things up and work our way through it.

“It’s all very well trying to peak for the National Championships, but what we are really looking at is the Worlds and everything we are doing now in training and at the NAC is part of our build-up to Shanghai. That has to be the priority.”

Ashling Cooney of ESB produced a cracking Irish record in the second semi-final of the 100m backstroke in one minute 1.87 seconds, just .17 of a second shy of the World Championship qualifying standard.

As this year’s Nationals are a World Championship qualifying meet, Cooney will have another chance of making that standard in this evening’s final.