There’s been a lot of talk this week about what it means to represent your country. Some people it seems aren’t very sure. At least depending on the sport. Or else like Shane Ryan only found out on Friday morning his country can now be represented by him.

That honour has already come a long way. About 3,257 miles and exactly 365 days, for starters. Leaving behind family, friends, a final year in college, and those delicious Philly Cheesesteaks. To live in a small concrete house in a far corner of the National Sports Campus at Abbotstown, in near isolation, without being eligible for any funding or commercial sponsorship.

To spend nearly every single one of those 365 days swimming, eating, and sleeping. Then swimming, eating, and sleeping. With the sole and unwavering purpose of qualifying for the Rio Olympics. To represent not the country of his birth, but of his father, Thomas Ryan, and a list of aunts and uncles in Portarlington, Co Laois as long as his incredibly rangy arms. And the country of his mother, Mary Ryan, whose parents are from Donegal and whose father took part in the 1916 Rising.

He came here exactly 365 days ago, entirely by his own accord, without any guarantee of qualifying for Rio. There was no professional contract because it’s not allowed.

Complete backing

Ryan got the complete backing of Swim Ireland and other than he was on his own, a 21 year-old about 3,257 miles from his home in Havertown in the suburbs of west Philadelphia.

“I’ve every right to be here,” he says, with a beaming smile. “When I first came over, I knew I’d get some shit for it. And I still do. But it’s all in good fun. There’ll always be naysayers. If people say something about it I use that to drive me. And if anyone questions why I’m swimming for Ireland I’ve plenty of things to say back. Plenty of things.”

He’s telling me this on Thursday morning, at the National Aquatic Centre, his home from home for those last 365 days. According to Fina, the governing body of world swimming, he needed to be resident here for one year before being eligible to represent Ireland, even though he already holds an Irish passport. That’s because Ryan has, previously, represented the US, the country of his birth, although not the country he wanted to represent in the Olympics.

So now, starting with next week’s European Championships at the London Olympic pool, he represents Ireland, as he will in Rio in August, having already qualified in the 100m backstroke, swimming 53.96 seconds in Bangor back in March.

He’s only now eligible to break Irish records, which will soon tumble, given he’s already well inside them in both the 100m freestyle and backstroke.

Swimming for Ireland was something the family always talked about, especially his father. After playing minor football for Laois, around 1986, Thomas Ryan decided to spend a summer in New York, then decided to stay. He now works in the contracting business in Havertown, and with his wife Mary, raised his three children – Shane, Brendan and Tara – with an intense awareness for the country of his birth, where his own nine brothers and sisters still live.

With all that Irish in mind Ryan played several sports growing up, including Gaelic football, before eventually excelling at swimming, his long, lean physique tailor made for the backstroke. It earned him a scholarship to Penn State, which has the biggest and most successful sporting record in easthern United States. By the end of his junior year, around this time last year, he’d been ranked fourth in the US in the 100m backstroke, finished second in the NCAA collegiate championships.

Suddenly, it was making his mind up time: if Ryan was to swim for Ireland in Rio, he needed to defer his final year at Penn State, immediately move to Dublin for 365 days where he knew “absolutely no one”, and give up the backing of the superpower that is US swimming. He’d actually only 48 hours to decide or else it would be too late for Rio. When he suggested it to some classmates at Penn State they assumed he was joking. “This is so not you,” they said. He wasn’t joking: two days later he was gone.

“And I’ve never been so lonely in my life,” he says, still smiling. “I know that sounds so sad but I don’t really have anything else going on. That’s hard. But I haven’t regretted it for one second. Of course I miss so much about home. My mother’s cooking. But I’m not here to meet new people, as sad as that sounds too. I came here to swim fast for Ireland, to qualify for the Olympics, do well in the water. That’s my motivation.”

Favourite sources

One of his favourite sources of that motivation over the winter was the Sundays he spent with his aunts and uncles in Portarlington, and his grandfather, Paddy Ryan. He’d meet him at the train station and they’d play a round of golf, then head back to the relations for dinner. Without quite realising it his grandfather become one of his best friends, only for him to take sick over Christmas. He died two months later.

“When I got the qualifying time for Rio, back in March, it was for him, my grandfather. It was something the family needed.”

And maybe what it also means to represent your country.