SWIMMING O'Neill in Record Breaking Form on Day Three of the Dave McCullagh Memorial Meet

A highly successful Dave McCullagh Memorial Meet finished today in spectacular fashion with another 4 new Irish Senior Records set and more qualifiers for the Irish Teams for this summers major Long Course events including the World Championships in Rome this July.

Trojan swimmer Donal O'Neill set a new Irish Senior Record in the 50m Backstroke in a time of 26.19, a record previously held by Karl Burdis. In the 100m Butterfly, Ards swimmer Steven McQuillan broke his own Irish Senior Record with a time of 55.16. Irish Senior Relay records also fell today with Glenalbyn's women's 200m Freestyle relay team broke the Irish Senior Record with a time of 1:52.58 and Trojan's men's 200m Freestyle relay team set a new record with a time of 1:47.15.

Nuala Murphy, based in the Limerick High Performance Centre qualified today for the World Championships, taking the total number of Irish qualifiers to nine. The others who made the standard this weekend are Grainne Murphy, Donal O'Neill, Aisling Cooney, Niamh O'Sullivan and Clare Dawson. US based Ryan Harrison, Karl Burdis and Olympian Melanie Nocher had already qualified prior to this weekend's competition.

In addition, several more swimmers have achieved qualification times required for the other major summer competitions. Dan Sweeney from Sunday's Well achieved the standard for the European Youth Olympic Festival in Finland with a superb performance in the final of the 200m Breaststroke with a time of 2:22.50. Dan beat Michael Dawson from Ards to the Gold who himself made the time for the European Juniors with a time of 2:22.58.

The next major event in Irish Swimming takes place in 3 weeks time, the Irish Long Course Nationals in the NAC from 16 - 19 April represents another opportunity for qualification to the World Championships, World Student Games, European Junior Championships and the European Youth Olympic Festival. Peter Banks, Swim Irelands newly appointed High Performance Director will be in attendance to meet with Irish Swimmers and Coaches.


For further information contact:
Chantal Gibney / Robert Mooney, Swim Ireland
Ph: 086 3817933 / 086 8094786
Email: edo2@swimireland.ie / hp@swimireland.ie