Swimming European Senior Championships DAY 4

Murphy Has Swim of Her Life

Press Release

Budapest, 12 August 2010 - Grainne Murphy's 800m freestyle swim at the European Swimming Championships in Budapest today will go down in Irish swimming history. The 17-year old girl from Ballinaboola, Co. Wexford finished 16 lengths of the pool in a world class time of 8.25.04 - an agonising five hundredths of a second shy of winning the bronze medal for Ireland. But, her fourth place swim nevertheless re-writes the Irish record books and indeed lowers the Irish Senior record again, by almost 4 seconds - making it a whopping 11 second improvement that the young swimmer has made to her personal best time and to the Irish Senior record since she arrived in Budapest. Murphy is also Ireland's only finalist at a European Long Course Swimming Championships in the last ten years.

Speaking after the race, the sixth year Castletroy College student who phenomenally split personal best times for the 200 metres and 400 metres freestyle during her 800m final said "It went so well from the start, I just kept my head down and kept going. Obviously I could see Pellegrini coming up behind me - I didn't look at her on the last 50m but she snuck in there, and that's the way it goes."

Murphy, who established her qualifying time for these Championships as far back as February of this year, has shown tremendous form this week, achieving a seventh place finish in the 400m Individual Medley on Monday, the first day of the competition - the fruits of her consistent training regime with coach Ronald Claes, who she trains with at Swim Ireland's High Performance Centre at the University of Limerick.

"I'm not disappointed; it was just an amazing swim. 4th place at a European Championships - my first major competition, it hasn't really sunk in yet," added the joyful teenager.

In other Irish swims today, Barry Murphy and Ryan Harrison swam in the heats of the 100m freestyle, finishing in 51.23 (47th place) and 51.16 (44th place) respectively. It was a season's best time for Harrison, who holds the Irish record at 49.49, set last year at the World Swimming Championships while wearing a polyurethane suit. Dubliner Murphy goes in his premiere event, the 50m breaststroke tomorrow morning, in which he is currently ranked within the top 10 in Europe.

Other Irish in action tomorrow are Clare Dawson (200m freestyle), Melanie Nocher (200m freestyle, 50m backstroke) and Grainne Murphy (1500m freestyle). The next correspondence will be tomorrow lunchtime.

- END -

Issued by Swim Ireland, whose High Performance Programme is supported and funded by the Irish Sports Council

Day 4 Results ROUNDUP:

W 800m freestyle: 1st L. Friis (Den) 8.23.27, 2nd C. Etienne (Fra) 8.24.00, 3rd F. Pellegrini (Ita) 8.24.99, 4th G. Murphy (Irl) 8.25.04 M 100m freestyle: R. Harrison 51.16, 44th, B. Murphy 51.23, 47th

Media Contact:
Chantal Gibney, Swim Ireland
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