2026 IRISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPS & COMMONWEALTH GAMES TRIALS
- Wednesday, April 8th – Sunday, April 12th
- The Aurora Sports & Leisure Centre
- LCM (50m)
- SwimSwam Preview
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheet
- Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap
- Live Results
The 2026 Irish Open Championships continue to bring the heat, with multiple national records biting the dust as swimmers vie for roster spots for this year’s Commonwealth Games and European Championships.
We reported how last night, John Shortt and Jack Kelly each nailed a new national benchmark, with the former registering a new standard in the 100m back and the latter hitting a fresh new mark in the 50m breast.
Then today during the heats, Olympian Ellen Walshe produced a new Irish record en route to taking the top seed in the women’s 200m freestyle.
After already reaping gold in the 200m fly and 400m IM at this competition, 24-year-old Walshe fired off a morning swim of 1:58.72 to land lane four for tonight’s main event.
The former University of Tennessee swimmer produced splits of 28.06/29.78/30.27/30.61 to shave .16 off her former lifetime best and national record of 1:58.88 at last year’s edition of this meet.
Split Comparison:
| Ellen Walshe | Ellen Walshe | |
| New Irish Record | Old Irish Record | |
| 50m | 28.06 | 28.03 |
| 100m | 29.78 | 30.06 |
| 150m | 30.27 | 30.58 |
| 200m | 30.61 | 30.21 |
| Total Time | 1:58.72 | 1:58.88 |
Walshe was the sole swimmer to have delved under the 2:00 barrier this morning, but she’ll be chased by Grace Davison and Victoria Catterson, who will be flanking the European Short Course Championships multi-medalist for this evening’s medal-contending affair.
Davison registered 2:00.92 and Catterson logged 2:01.29.
