Swim Ireland’s Irish Open Swimming Championships kick of this Thursday, 28th April, with Irish swimmers still on the hunt for Olympic and European qualification times. 400 swimmers from 73 clubs including 17 foreign clubs will compete across four days of competition for national titles in 36 individual and 6 team events.
Ireland’s senior swimmers will be seeking qualification for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this August and the meet will be a last opportunity to qualify for the European (LC) Championships taking place in May in London. Thus far, Fiona Doyle, Shane Ryan and most recently Nicholas Quinn have met qualification times for the Olympic Games while 13 swimmers and 3 Divers have qualified for European Championships. 16 year old Conor Ferguson and UCD student Alex Murphy will be ones to watch over the weekend with both just marginally off the FINA A Olympic Qualification time at the Dave McCullagh Meet in March. Ferguson swam within .27 of the 100m Backstroke time of 54.36 while Murphy will need to knock just .43 of a second off his 100m Breaststroke time.
Ferguson and Murphy will also be part of an Ireland 4x100m Medley Relay team with Jordan Sloan and Brendan Hyland on Saturday as they look to post a time that could qualify Ireland a Relay for the Olympic Games for the first time in history. There are just 16 places at the Games for relays, the top 12 countries from the World Championships in 2015 already secured their places, meaning the fastest 4 teams outside of the 12 on the 31st May will claim a spot for their country. This will be one of two opportunities for the team to post a time with the second coming at European Championships.
Ireland’s junior swimmers will be looking to qualify for the European Junior Championships in Hungary, 14 swimmers are already qualified and will all be in action as they continue their preparations for the July event. Danielle Hill, Mona McSharry, Emma Reid and Gerry Quinn have all set Junior Irish Records in the past month and will be hoping to lower those times across the weekend.
Speaking before the event Swim Ireland National Performance Director Peter Banks commented “The Irish Open will kick off some great swimming over the next few weeks with swimmers out to make Olympic standards. We’re looking forward to a great event with lots of fast swimming.”
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Swimming news courtesy of Swim Ireland.
