SWIMMING Irish Swimming Squad Depart for World Championships, Rome

The Irish Swimming Squad departed from Dublin airport this morning for a training camp in Northern Italy in advance of the World Swimming Championships in Rome in two weeks time. Team members that flew out from Dublin today included Irish star Andrew Bree who finished eleventh overall in the 200m breaststroke at the Beijing Olympics last year, along with his fellow Olympians Melanie Nocher and Aisling Cooney.

Ireland are sending a team of thirteen swimmers to Rome, the largest ever Irish swimming team to be sent to a World Championships event.

200 nations, 2,800 athletes, 2,000 volunteers and 1,500 journalists will play a role in this year's World Championships event. The qualification process for Irish swimmers consisted of 2 domestic qualifier events during the year at which achievement of the qualifying times as set by Swim Ireland, the National Governing Body for swimming in Ireland, could be achieved. Foreign-based swimmers were required to designate one swim meet to be their qualifier.

The team comprises of seven females and six males and they are accompanied by seven staff, including lead coach and National High Performance Director Peter Banks. All 3 of last summer's Beijing Olympians are on the squad; Andrew Bree, Aisling Cooney and Melanie Nocher and they are all hoping to build on their successful performances from the Olympic Games. They are joined by US-based swimmers Barry Murphy, Karl Burdis and Ryan Harrison and Bangor's Clare Dawson who is based at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Three of the team are based out of Swim Ireland's High Performance Centre at the University of Limerick. These are Grainne Murphy, Niamh O'Sullivan and Nuala Murphy. The team is completed with Donal O'Neill of Trojan Swimming Club, Conor Leaney of Larne Swimming Club and Limerick's Fiona Doyle.

In Prague this week at the European Junior Championships Limerick High Performance Centre swimmer Grainne Murphy became the European Junior Champion in three events; the 200m and 400m Individual Medley and the 800m freestyle - breaking two new European Junior records in the process. Murphy will join the Irish squad in Italy, with three European golds and one bronze medal (1500m freestyle) to her name.

Over the past week, a total of 20 new Irish records have been set - between the World University Games, Belgrade and the European Junior Championships, Prague which both took place last week. The Irish squad are excited and highly motivated for the upcoming World event.

Swim Ireland's new High Performance Director Peter Banks is lead coach for the championships. "We want to get as many of our athletes to the major championships as we can," says Banks. "We want to expose the swimmers to the highest level of competition available so that as we move to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games we have as much experience as possible."

With the instrumental support of the Irish Sports Council, Swim Ireland now has two National Performance Centres. In 2006, Swim Ireland in conjunction with the Irish Sports Council and the University of Limerick collaborated to establish Ireland's first High Performance Centre for swimming. The University of Limerick High Performance Centre (HPC-UL) is managed by Swim Ireland's Limerick High Performance Centre Coach Ronald Claes. September 2009 will see the opening of the National Aquatic Performance Centre in Dublin and the head coach of this centre will be Paul Donovan. The Performance Centres are designed to raise the level of training opportunities for Irish swimmers and to provide the structure and programmes to allow our top swimmers to achieve success at a European, World, and Olympic level, at home in Ireland.

For further information contact:

Chantal Gibney, Swim Ireland
Ph: 086 3817933
Email: edo2@swimireland.ie