After eight frantically fast lengths Daniel Wiffen finished short of the medals in the 400m freestyle on the opening finals day at the World Swimming Championships in Doha.
The 22-year-old from Armagh touched home in seventh, clocking 3:46.65. Woo-min Kim from South Korea set off at world record pace inside the Aspire Dome before just about holding on for gold in 3:42.71.
Silver went to the 2022 world champion Elijah Winnington from Australia, a fingertip away in 3:42.86, with Lukas Martens from Germany third in 3:42.96, having also won bronze at last year’s championships in Fukuoka.
It was the first time Wiffen had made a global 400m final - this distance represents his weakest of the three events he’s swimming in Doha, after the 800m and 1,500m freestyle, which come later in the week.
Swimming in lane six, Wiffen was holding fourth place at the 100m mark, before dropping back three places over the later lengths of the race.
“A bit disappointed with the swim,” Wiffen said. “I did think I’d be able to challenge for the podium, but I’m not really a fan of the 400m after that. I tried to go out fast, and I think I paid for it at the back end. But I don’t really have the speed that those guys have, I’m coming down events, unlike the rest of them.
“But looking forward to the 800m and 1,500m, 100 per cent, a day off now, and then try get on the podium in the 800m.”
After top seed Ahmed Hafnaoui from Tunisia didn’t start the event, all three medal positions appeared wide open, and 22-year-old Kim certainly made the most of his chance, having finished fifth in the event last year. Guilherme Costa from Brazil, fourth last year, finished fourth again.
At last year’s World Championships in Fukuoka, Wiffen finished fourth in both the 800m and 1,500m freestyle, both of which were won by Hafnaoui.
Irish swimmers have previously won three medals at the World Short Course (25m) Championships, thanks to Shane Ryan (2018 bronze), Ellen Walshe (2021 silver) and Mona McSharry (2021 bronze), but they have never done so in the Olympic-size pool.
Earlier in the day, Wiffen had finished third in his heat, and with that went into the final ranked fourth overall of the eight finalists with his qualifying time 3:45.52, just outside his best time of 3:44.35.
It’s exactly two months since Wiffen won three gold medals at the European Short Course Championships in Romania, where he also became the first Irish swimmer to set a world record, smashing the 15-year-old 800m mark which had stood to the Australian great Grant Hackett.
Following the morning heats, Ireland’s women’s 4x100m freestyle relay sat in 16th place in the Paris Olympic rankings, the final spot available, with Slovenia the only team that could knock them out of that place by swimming faster than Ireland’s 3:41.75, set at the 2023 World Championships.
In the end Slovenia did exactly that, swimming the Sunday evening final in 3:41.72, just three hundredths of a second faster and moving Ireland to 17th and just outside the automatic Paris Olympic quota places.
Darragh Greene also went into the 100m Breaststroke heats and finished 20th overall, touching in 1:00.70, just outside the semi-final places. In the 50m Butterfly heats, Shane Ryan was just off his best of 23.67 clocking 23.83 for 26th place overall, and he returns on Wednesday for his main event, the 100m Freestyle.
