SWIMMING:GRÁINNE MURPHY narrowly missed out on a place in the 1,500 metres freestyle final yesterday morning at the World Long Course Championships in Shanghai after she placed 10th overall following the conclusion of the heats.
The 18-year-old distance freestyle and individual medley specialist won her heat by a massive eight seconds in 16:14.81 and the closest rival to finish behind her was Britain’s Keri-Anne Payne (16:23.11).
However, only the top eight swimmers progressed through to this evening’s final.
Denmark’s Lotte Friis came through as the fastest qualifier in 16:00.47, followed by Yiwen Shao of China (16:01.72) and USA’s Kate Ziegler (16:02.53).
“That was a fast 1,500 metres this morning. It was difficult for Gráinne being in the first of the seeded heats and out on her own. She probably could have gone faster if she was pushed and in a quicker heat,” said Peter Banks, national performance director for Swim Ireland following the race.
“Gráinne always takes well to a challenge and unfortunately she didn’t have that this morning.”
Gráinne’s coach Ronald Claes agreed with those sentiments.
“I think she had a great swim, the unfortunate thing was she had to swim all by herself. Those girls (swimmers in the two heats following Murphy’s heat) saw Gráinne’s time and they just raced each other. I think there were five or six girls in that heat racing each other, and Gráinne didn’t have that race so that was a big disadvantage for someone like Gráinne who likes a race and always goes faster when there is a race – she didn’t get that today.”
“It was a bit unexpected, the two heats after that, what the girls were going to do. Gráinne is ranked nine in the 800m freestyle and it’s going to be a pretty tough event. I know that she is very eager now to get the little dip from today out of the way and she’ll push it that much harder in the 800m,” Claes added.
Murphy completed the second half of her Leaving Certificate examinations this summer before heading to the Irish team training camp in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia two weeks ago.
Following her 1,500m race but before the event had completed (there were two more heats remaining), a relaxed Murphy commented, “I’m going to go back and swim down, get a massage and see what happens. I’ve got the 800m later on in the week and the 400m IM and we have the 4x200m relay so there’s still lots of more events to come. Everyone is really excited about it (the relay) and it’s great to be able to do a relay here and see what comes out of it.”
In other news yesterday, Sycerika McMahon set an Irish Junior record in the 100m breaststroke in a time of 1:09.91.
It was a phenomenal swim and a personal best time by over half a second for the Portaferry teenager who just two weeks ago picked up three medals (two gold and one silver) at the European Junior Championships in Belgrade.
“I did what I wanted to do, I got a PB (personal best) so I’m really pleased with that. I was trying to go out fast because if I get out fast usually I can maintain it so that was my aim. I think I got out fast enough and tried to keep ahead of the girl next to me,” said McMahon afterwards.
McMahon had a full programme of races at the European Juniors earlier this month and still has the 4x200m freestyle relay on Thursday and the 50m breaststroke on Saturday to prepare for.
“Usually if I have more races, I think that I don’t have to concentrate on one and I can get too focused on one maybe. So yeah, more races seems to help me. As far as swimming the Junior Europeans and then here, it’s my first time doing that so I’m not really sure if that helps,” added the 16-year-old.
Melanie Nocher finished her heat of the 100m backstroke in the morning in 1:03.43, just over a second outside her personal best but looks ahead to her other events this week – the 200m freestyle tomorrow, the 4x200m freestyle relay (Thursday) and the 200m backstroke (Friday).
“It’s not the time really I wanted, don’t really know what happened. I’ve just got to try and keep focused. I felt really good going into that, ideally I would have liked faster,” said a disappointed Nocher after the race.
Ireland in action
Today: Barry Murphy (50m breaststroke), Melanie Nocher (200m freestyle).
DAY TWO RESULTS
Heats:
W 100m backstroke:
M. Nocher 1:03.43 37th place
W 100m breaststroke:
S. McMahon 1:09.91 27th place
*Irish Junior Record*
W 1500m freestyle:
G. Murphy 16:14.81 10th place
