GRÁINNE MURPHY has not come from nowhere. Last year the 17-year-old from Ballinaboola, New Ross, won the 2009 Texaco Young Sports Star of the Year award, writes Johnny Watterson.
That’s a tough rostrum to find for an Irish swimmer. But Murphy had illuminated the summer at the junior European Championships in Prague last July when she won three gold medals and one bronze, making her the most successful swimmer of any nation at the meet. She also became the first Irish competitor to win a European junior title.
But perhaps a better glimpse of her talent came in the times she swam. In the 400 metres medley, Murphy touched at 4:40.88 seconds, bettering the long-standing mark set by the current Olympic Champion Yana Klochkova and ranking her 23rd in the world. The time was also 0.8 seconds outside the senior Irish record set by Michelle Smith de Bruin at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
The lengthening medal and Irish senior record trail makes Murphy something of a one-off in Irish sport. Like Derval O’Rourke, the European silver medallist hurdler, she seems to find her best for championship racing, where many other Irish hopefuls have not.
Murphy’s season last year finished with two European junior records, two Irish senior records and seven Irish junior records. Taking eight seconds off the Irish record yesterday was a stand-out swim and for her not unprecedented but no, Murphy’s ability to swim extremely fast has not come out of the dark.
She began swimming more than 10 years ago in her local pool, following her older sister Niamh into the sport. Their home was close to the New Ross pool and she fast became a regular. As a young teenager she competed in the Community Games with Rathgarogue/Cushinstown and also swam for the Irish schools team.
By then her talent was receiving attention. Blessed with a natural swimming physique, she moved to Annacotty, Co Limerick, when she was 13-years-old and enrolled in Castletroy College.
Her parents, Mary and Brendan, agreed that to maximise her talent she needed to be close to the 50-metre pool in the University of Limerick. It was a phenomenal parental commitment and required her mother to stay in Limerick for long periods while Gráinne studied and swam. She got up in the mornings with her daughter before 5am and accompanied her to the morning sessions with Limerick high performance centre coach Ronald Claes, who is at UL full-time.
Claes is a former Belgian swimmer and coach, who was head coach for the Flemish Swimming Federation and for the Royal Belgian Swimming Federation at the 2005 Youth Olympics and at the 2006 and 2007 European Junior Championships.
Murphy did her Leaving Cert this year and has said she wishes go to college. She will undoubtedly be able to take her pick of swimming scholarships almost anywhere in the world.
Wherever that is, the next two years will be devoted to the 2012 Olympics when she will be 19-years-old. The kid who was coming may now have arrived.
