Swim Ireland’s Irish National Team Trials for 2021 International Summer Meets start tomorrow, Tuesday 20th April, at the National Aquatic Centre on the Sport Ireland National Sports Campus.
Ireland’s best swimmers will have the
opportunity to meet qualification standards for the 2021 Tokyo Olympic and
Paralympic Games, the 2021 LEN European Championships in Budapest (Hungary) in
May, and the LEN European Junior Championships in Rome, Italy in July.
The opening day of action will see a
number of Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls in action in their main events
including Ireland’s fastest ever female swimmer Danielle Hill in the 100m
Backstroke. Hill needs to knock .65 of a second off her best time of 1:00.90 to
make the Tokyo time of 1:00.25. In the Men’s event, top seed Shane Ryan has
already hit the qualification time for Tokyo.
The 100m Breaststroke will see Mona
McSharry and Niamh Coyne aiming for the Olympic qualification time of 1:07.07.
McSharry is just three hundredths of a second outside of this mark with a best
time of 1:07.10, while Coyne will need to drop 0.8 seconds. Ellen Keane and
Nicole Turner, already under the minimum qualification time for the Paralympic
Games, will also be in action. In the men’s event, Darragh Greene has secured
the Olympic qualification time, while Rio 2016 Olympian Nicholas Quinn and
Ireland’s Irish Junior Record holder Eoin Corby will be vying for the second
available spot.
Brendan Hyland, Irish Record holder
in the 200m Butterfly, will need to knock .07 off his best time of 1:56.55 to
meet the Tokyo standard of 1:56.48. And in the 200m Freestyle, Bangor’s Jack
McMillan, who set the Irish Record of 1:47.10 at the Irish Winter Meet in
December, can meet the Tokyo qualification time (1:47.02) by taking .08 of a
second off his time.
Speaking ahead of the meet, Swim
Ireland National Performance Director Jon Rudd commented “It has been a very
careful and at times challenging process to get us to the point where we can
have Ireland’s leading athletes go head to head over five days in an attempt to
claim Olympic and Paralympic berths and other international selections. We are
thrilled to be only one day away from this happening now, with so many of our
swimming community and supporters of Irish swimming watching every stroke of
every session with us via the live stream. Our athletes and coaches have
prepared in the very best way possible during a pandemic and without the
support of our principal partners and stakeholders in Performance swimming, we
would not be where we are now – five days of exciting racing with all to play
for. So sit back, turn on your PC screen – and enjoy!”
Swim Ireland wholeheartedly
recognises the support of the Government of Ireland, the Department of Sport,
Sport Ireland and the Sport Ireland Institute, the Olympic Federation of
Ireland, the Sport Ireland Campus, the University of Limerick, the Northern Ireland
Executive, SERCO and Sport Northern Ireland and its Institute for supporting us
to deliver this event for our top Irish performance athletes.
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