SWIMMING: AFTER A frustrating season and a disappointing World Championship in Shanghai earlier this year, Ireland's Gráinne Murphy can now concentrate fully on next weekend's European Short Course (25 metres) meet at Szczecin in Poland having dipped under the Olympic Games A qualifying standard for the 800 metres freestyle at the Dutch Nationals Long Course (50 Metres) this weekend.

The 18-year-old Wexford teenager, based at the High Performance centre in Limerick, took the bronze medal for the women’s 800m at the Pieter Van Den Hoogenband Complex in Eindhoven, but more importantly made the plane to London subject to ratification by the Olympic Council of Ireland.

In a heat-declared race, with only one swim in the event, Murphy recorded 8:31.14 seconds in taking third place, 2.70 seconds inside the time required and joined Barry Murphy (100m Breaststroke) as the second Irish swimmer to go under the Olympic qualifying standard.

Mireia Belmonte Garcia from Spain took the 800m free gold medal while the silver went to Danish swimmer Lotte Friis who beat Murphy to the gold medal in the women’s 1,500m free at the Europeans in Budapest last year.

Murphy rounded out her weekend in Eindhoven when she was classified fourth overall in the women’s 400m individual medley, another heat-declared event in a time of 4:44.61.

“We had hoped to have at least two swimmers under the qualifying times at this stage and we have done that” said Peter Banks, Ireland’s High performance coach. “However we would have liked one or two more”.

Banks has a stated aim of six A standard qualifiers for the London Games, but outside of the two Murphys, others in Ireland’s London 2012 squad are struggling to make the times.

Melanie Nocher had already missed out on qualifying for London in her favourite event, the women’s 200m backstroke, and in yesterday’s 100m final Nocher, who is not a sprint specialist, was almost two seconds shy of the Olympic A qualifying standard in a time of 1:02.67.

Sycerika McMahon picked up Ireland’s third bronze medal of the meet, this time in the final of the women’s 50m breaststroke, a non-Olympic race in a time of 31.63 seconds.

Ireland also had a squad in the fastest heat of the women’s 4x200 freestyle of McMahon, Bethany Carson, Nocher and Claire Dawson, with the quartet registering a time of 8:10.97 – over three seconds outside the Irish senior record.

Meanwhile, in the US 2008 Beijing Olympian Andrew Bree finished fifth in the B final of the men’s 200m breaststroke at the US winter nationals in Atlanta, Georgia, but his time of 2:15.62 was some way short of the A standard time for the event in which he was placed 12th overall in China, four years ago.