Sport

Brendan Hyland lowers 200m butterfly mark at Irish Open

Irish international still short of qualifying mark for summer’s world championships

Brendan Hyland lowered his Irish record in the men’s 200 metres butterfly at the the Irish Open Swimming championships. Photograph: Andrea Staccioli/Inpho
John Kenny at the NAC
Fri Mar 29 2019 - 19:14

Brendan Hyland set the third Irish senior record of the week, winning the gold medal in the men's 200 metres butterfly on day three of the Irish Open Swimming championships at the NAC in Dublin.

Hyland’s terrific gold medal swim of 1:57.21 was under his own Irish record by .17 of a second, but was over half a second shy of the A time for the worlds this summer

The NAC meet is the only opportunity for Irish swimmers to qualify for a range of upcoming competitions, including the world championships in South Korea in July, and so far only Darragh Greene and the men’s freestyle relay squad have qualified for the Gwangju meet.

Danielle Hill of Larne showed that she had shrugged off recent injury problems in winning the 50 metres backstroke in a new Irish senior record of 28.64 seconds.

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Scotland's Hanna Miley, the veteran two-time Olympian, won her third gold medal of the week when she won the women's 200 fly in 2:13.39. Ellen Walsh of Templeogue came home in second to win the national title.

There was a junior record in the opening race of the night as 18-year-old Lisburn swimmer Daniel Wiffen destroyed the field to win the men's 800 freestyle in 8:16.79, slicing over three and a half seconds off the six-year-old Irish best time.

The heats on day four of the competition on Saturday will see the focus switch to Shane Ryan.

Ryan won a bronze medal in the 50 metres backstroke at the world short course championships last December and will attempt to dip below the required qualifying time for the men’s 100 metres backstroke, his main event.

Ryan is likely to have Conor Ferguson, the 50 backstroke champion from this year's open meet, alongside in the final as both hope to go below 54.06 seconds in order to get on the plane to Gwangju.

“My backstroke is good and I have to cut .6 of a second off my personal best to make the worlds, but I’m in a good place,” said Ryan.

“We tried a few new things in the 100 free to see where we are and my taper is at a different stage, but it will be good to have Conor in the final and hopefully we can both qualify.”