Firth Wins Third World Silver

Bethany Firth has tonight won her third Silver Medal at the Paralympic Swimming World Championships in Montreal, Canada.

Firth, swimming in her final and weakest event of the Championships, the 100m Breaststroke, had the swim of her life in tonight's Final shaving almost two seconds off her personal best time set in the heats this morning and claiming Silver in a new lifetime best of 1:18.74.

The 17 year olds earlier time of 1:20.50 in the heats had placed her third going into tonight's Final, behind Spain's Michelle Alonso Morales and Great Britain's Nicole Lough. Firth however, started tonight's Final with great intent clocking the fastest reaction time off the block and at the 50m mark she was in second place just .09 of a second ahead of Lough in third. But Firth was determined not to be beaten to the Silver medal touching over 1.5 seconds ahead of the Bronze medallist Lough who finished in 1:20.30.

"It's just amazing" commented a delighted Firth "I don't normally like swimming Breaststroke but I'm so pleased. Before I went into the race Jim (coach) told me just to enjoy it and I really did enjoy it".
Paralympic Champion and World Record holder Alonso Morales was the Gold medallist in 1:17.63 just over a second ahead of Firth.

Ireland's medal tally now stands at 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze at these Championships with Firth accounting for the three Silver medals in the 200m Freestyle, 100m Backstroke and 100m Breaststroke.

Ellen Keane will be the only Irish swimmer in action tomorrow morning in her final event of the Championships, the 100m Butterfly S9. Keane who has already won Bronze in the 100m Breaststroke is the fifth fastest seed going into tomorrow's heats and should be confident of a Final spot. James Scully will swim a straight Final in the 100m Freestyle S5 tomorrow night at 11:58pm (Irish time), Scully won Bronze in the 200m Freestyle earlier this week.