S WIMMING EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS:SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Gráinne Murphy, in her first year as a senior international, produced one of the most outstanding swims seen by an Irish competitor in recent years when she qualified fastest for today's women's 800 metres freestyle final at the European swimming championships in Budapest
The Wexford teenager immediately played down her medal chances saying that she felt that the favourites were holding themselves back in the heats while she was going all out.
Murphy, a three-times gold medallist at the junior Europeans last year in Prague and who made the 400 IM final on Monday where she finished seventh, pulled out of the 200 IM heats yesterday to concentrate fully on the 800 free.
Swimming in heat two, she produced a sensational swim to claim not only the heat win, but also the fastest qualifying time of all eight swimmers to have reached the final.
Behind her was Britain’s Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington, world champion Lottie Friis of Denmark, and international superstar Frederica Pelligrini of Italy, the world record holder over 200m and 400m free.
There is no doubt that they are faster 800 freestylers than the Irish sensation and should be the medal contenders as Murphy moved to dampen down expectations.
“As regards my medal hopes, I would say that Friis and the others like Adlington and Pelligrini were just cruising it in the heats, but I’ll stay positive and see how it goes,” she said
“All the other girls have five or six years of experience so I’m just going to go into the final and enjoy it and swim to the best of my ability.”
Her heat winning time of 8.28.91 smashed the Irish record by eight seconds, but the final is likely to be won in a time 10 seconds quicker than that again.
“It was a really good race. My freestyle has been going really well in training and I’ve been concentrating on it a lot, improving my stroke which felt very good and strong from start to finish,” added Murphy
“I have also being doing a lot of descending work in training and it really paid off. Obviously in an event like the 800 free it’s a lot easier to do that.
“I’m really happy with the time as well. To be honest, I’ve come here to swim to the best of my ability. Since I turned 17, this is the biggest competition I have taken part in. Just being here is giving me such experience and swimming in a heat with Lotte Friis is just something else.”
While Murphy was making her mark, there was not such good news for Andrew Bree, as his poor Europeans continued, as he failed to even make the semi finals of his top event, the men’s 200 breaststroke, finishing 17th overall in 2.15.02, while Melanie Nocher also failed to progress from the 100 backstroke preliminaries.
“I felt pretty good up until the last length and then I shortened my stroke and tried to speed it up and that backfired. That last 10 metres was pretty ugly,” said Bree
“It’s not fun coming down to watch the semi-finals knowing that I’m a swimmer that should be there and I should be in the final.”
In last night’s finals France’s Sebastian Rouault won the demanding men’s 1500 metres in 14min 55 17, Paul Biederman won the men’s 200 Freestyle to add to the world title he won last year while Russia’s Yulia Efimova took gold in the women’s 100 breaststroke final.
Francesca Halsall secured Britain’s third gold medal by winning the women’s 100 Freestyle in 53.58 and Hungarian Lazlo Cseh delighted the sell-out home town crowd when he won the men’s 200 IM in a new championship record of 1.57.73.
Ireland have two swimmers in this morning’s heats as Ryan Harrison and Barry Murphy contest the men’s 100 freestyle.
Irish Results
DAY THREE HEATS
M 200m breaststroke:A. Bree 2.15.02, 17th place
W 100m backstroke:M. Nocher 1.03.46, 27th place
W 800m freestyle:G. Murphy 8.28.91, *Fastest Qualifier for Final.
