2025 IRISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Saturday, April 12th – Wednesday, April 16th
- Sport Ireland National Aquatic Centre, Dublin, Ireland
- LCM (50m)
- SwimSwam Preview
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheet
- Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap
- Results – Meet Mobile: Irish Open Championships 2025
The 2025 Irish Open Championships continued today from Dublin with a national record going down on the women’s side during this morning’s heats and then again in the semi-final.
Racing in the prelim of the 200m freestyle event, 23-year-old Olympian Ellen Walshe fired off a new lifetime best en route to capturing the top seed.
Walshe stopped the clock at a time of 1:59.31, beating the pack by nearly 5 seconds.
That morning outing overtook the previous Irish national standard of 1:59.74 Victoria Catterson established at the 2023 edition of these championships.
Come tonight’s final and University of Tennessee standout Walshe upped the ante with an even quicker mark of 1:58.88. That means she became the first-ever woman from her nation to clear the 1:59-barrier.
This evening Walshe split 28.03/30.06 (58.09)/30.58/30.21 en route to producing the fasetset time of her career. Entering this competition, she had been as quick as 2:00.39 from February of this year.
Catterson was indeed in tonight’s semi-final, putting up a time of 2:00.85 as the 2nd-seeded swimmer headed into tomorrow night’s final round.
The World Aquatics ‘A’ standard rests at 1:58.23 so Walshe will need to find yet another gear in order to clear that threshold and add the event to her potential Singapore lineup.
Additional Notes
- After hitting an impressive new national standard of 1:56.61 during last night’s 200m back semi-finals, 18-year-old John Shortt dropped the final. That let Brandon Biss get it done for gold, registering 2:01.16 to beat the field by over 3 seconds.
- The semi-finals of the women’s 200m breast saw 20-year-old Ellie McCartney stake her claim on gold. She posted a swift outing of 2:24.35, the fastest of her career, to dip under the World Aquatics ‘A’ standard of 2:25.91 needed for Singapore.
- National record holder Danielle Hill led the women’s 50m free semi-final with a result of 25.22, the sole swimmer under the 26-barrier. She’ll need to be more in line with her personal best of 24.68 from last year in order to clear the ‘A’ mark of 24.86 needed to book her spot on the World Championships roster.
- Portugal’s Diogo Ribeiro posted the fastest time of the men’s 100m freestyle semi-finals, stopping the clock at 48.63. That was about a second off his lifetime best and Portuguese national record of 48.98 notched in March of last year. The quickest Irishman was represented by Evan Bailey, with the 20-year-old hitting 49.16 to set himself up for tomorrow’s main event.
