The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for February: Mona McSharry (Swimming)

“I’ve always been pretty hard on myself,” says Mona McSharry, “I don’t give myself a lot of breaks in any aspect of my life. Now that I’m older, I recognise that more and can deal with it a little better. I’m trying to cut myself some slack.”

So, you’re congratulating her on reaching three finals at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, finishing fifth in two of them, when you realise she has a way to go yet before giving herself that break.

“I forget that no one really fully knows what I believe I can do. After the Worlds, I got a lot of kind ‘well done’ messages and my mom said a lot of people back home were so proud and thought I did amazing. Honestly, it hurt a little to hear that because in my head I was like, ‘well, I didn’t actually do amazing, I did okay’.

It was only when she got back to Knoxville, where she is a student at the University of Tennessee, from where she is due to graduate in May with a degree in kinesiology, that she reassessed her performances in Doha and gave herself an upgrade. Well, a slight one.

“I think where my struggles come from are the goals I impose on myself. When I don’t reach them, I feel that everyone is looking at me like I failed, when really I’m the only one thinking that.

“And my reasons for going to the Worlds were that I wanted more practice at a really competitive meet early in the season. It wasn’t to get a medal, it wasn’t to swim a PB [personal best], I knew it was too early for that because of the training block I was in.”

“But then you get there and you look at the heat sheets, you see that you’re placed first or second or whatever. You’re into the final, you’re in the middle lane . . . yeah, I came away feeling like I’d failed.

“But then you sit back and think about it, review and reflect. It actually wasn’t that bad. I’m in a good place. I didn’t get the results I wanted, but the goal for this year wasn’t to win a medal at the Worlds, although that would have been an awesome bonus.”

She was hardly back in Tennessee when she was in action for her university at the South Eastern Conference (SEC) championships, the highlight of her contribution to their overall triumph the 55.95 she swam in the 100m breaststroke in a medley relay. That made her only the second woman in history to break the 56 seconds mark.

“I knew that I was going to have to get a little bit ahead to give my team-mates an opportunity to really race. But college racing has such an unbelievable atmosphere, it just pushes you on when you’re trying to swim fast. I would rank it higher than the Olympics. Everyone is screaming their heads off, it creates such an amazing place to race, having people support you like that, believe in you, it makes the world of difference. And when you’re doing it for your team, it just drives you on even more.”

It was back in January that she spoke to Ian O’Riordan about reaching a point where she hated swimming, and considered quitting. It was a stark and honest insight to her relationship with her sport which has been at the centre of the 23-year-old Sligo woman’s life since she was a child. Where is that relationship now?

“It’s good. It’s a work in progress. There are definitely days when it’s a little bit more stressful, like today when I woke up and honestly didn’t want to be an athlete. But I think we all have days like that.

You’re not going to be 100 per cent committed every single day, and I think I had to come to terms with that and not hold it against myself too harshly.

“I have to remind myself why I love it and why I do it. But it’s going well. I think I’m coming to a point where I know that I don’t have a lot of time left in the sport. I don’t see myself going for another four, five or six years.

“So I’m trying to just really enjoy it while I can because I’m not going to be in this place forever. Trying to enjoy high-level training and pushing my body to a place that most people will never experience, trying to focus on that more than whatever the outcome is going to be, not to let that worry me.

“That was the huge turning point for me, getting to that point where I realised that I’m not doing this so that I can have as many medals as possible. I love to compete and I love that competition, but once it’s over, I’m not going to remember the exact place that I got. I’m going to remember the enjoyment of competing, how it felt to race really fast. I can’t control what the other seven people in my final do. I can only control what I do and try to enjoy that as much as possible.

“Swimming is a huge part of my life, so I don’t want to end up resenting it because it’s given me so much. It’s shaped who I am. While it will be scary and sad to leave something I’ve committed to for so long, I’m excited about the next chapter in my life, whatever that’s going to be.

“But for now, I know that I still really want to do it, I keep pushing back the line of when I want to retire. I don’t know, I’m maybe going to do another half a year or another year. We’ll see. I do sometimes think about the freedom that I’ll have after this, but I know eventually I will need to get a proper job. So I’ll be back on a schedule again, but a different one.”

Pause has been pressed, though, on any thoughts of retirement, the Paris Olympics, after all, are just a handful of months away. She reached the 100m breaststroke final last time around in Tokyo, at the age of just 20, so she’s imposing higher goals on herself again. She’s not fixated, though, on these Games, she insists.

“They pop in to my mind every once in a while, but I’m trying not to have it be everything I think about right now. I’m trying to give myself grace, not be tense and have it sitting in my head, rent free.”

Meantime, not being too hard on herself? Still a work in progress.