Sligo’s Mona McSharry has qualified for the Tokyo 2020 100m Breaststroke semi-final in ninth position, swimming a time that was within a tenth of a second of her Irish Senior Record during her Olympic debut appearance in Sundays morning’s heats.
The 20-year-old from Grange, who is
now based at the University of Tennessee in the US, had never swum the event
inside 1:07 before April 2021, but since then has consistently posted times in
the 1:06 range, including today.
Finishing third in her heat and
touching the wall in 1:06.39, she was agonisingly close to the Irish Senior
Record that she set to qualify for Tokyo. The time was enough to move her up
the rankings from 11th to 9th, with the top-eight in the semi-finals assured of
a position in Tuesday’s Olympic Final.
McSharry was a senior LEN European
Championships bronze medallist in 50m Breaststroke in the 25m pool in 2018, and
was also a double gold medallist in the 100m Breaststroke at the 2017 FINA
World Junior Championships and LEN European Junior Championships.
Following the race, McSharry said:
“I’m really excited. Watching Ellen [Walshe] yesterday and seeing the buzz she
came back with kind of just pushed me on. It really is something else competing
at the Olympics and I’m so glad I got the first race done now – and I’m so
happy that I get to do another one.
“I really burned coming up the last
25m and I could see the Swiss girl on the right of me kind of catch me and I
said, ‘no, she’s not going to pass me!’.”
Danielle Hill from Larne Swimming
Club also made her Olympic debut this morning. She came third in her 100m
Backstroke heat in a time of 1:00.86. Hill was just off her lifetime best time,
but moved up two places in the rankings to finish 25th overall.
Facing a challenging preparation into
the Games itself, Hill was unable to travel to the Hamamatsu training camp with
the remainder of the team for medical reasons and her performance is very
pleasing considering her arrival into Tokyo was not as smooth as originally
planned.
Hill will be back at the Tokyo
Aquatics Centre on Friday to compete in the 50m Freestyle heats.
Full results: Olympic Schedule &
Results - 25 Jul | Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Schedule, Monday – July 26
02:56 Mona McSharry – 100m
Breaststroke Semi-Final – PB 1:06.29
11:29 Brendan Hyland – 200m Butterfly
(Heat 2) – PB 1:56.55
11:45 Ellen Walshe – 200m Individual
Medley (Heat 4) – PB 2:21.02
Jessica Lamb Communications Executive
Michael Phelps Teaches Swimming
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