Daniel Wiffen confident the stars are aligning as he goes for gold
La Défense Freestyle Picture: Confident: Arena Wiffen 800m The At Men's After His Winning Macnicol/sportsfile Ian Heat Daniel Paris
Daniel Wiffen is confident that the stars are aligning for him to take the gold medal in the 800m freestyle at the Paris La Defense Arena here on Tuesday night.
The man from Magheralin, who played GAA in his younger days, was taking to the pool a day after his county won the All-Ireland football final at Croke Park and if auguries are your thing at times like this then he has more again for you.
“Yeah, Armagh won,” he explained. “My birthday is on July 14th, Bastille Day. What is it, 100 years since Ireland competed in Paris [for the first time as an independent nation]? It just seems everything is aligning, doesn’t it?”.
Wiffen secured his place in his first Olympic final with a convincing performance and time of 7:41.53 on Monday morning that saw him home roughly a second before his nearest challenger but said he still had more to come.
“It’s never comfortable, but it wasn’t at 100 percent,” he explained. “You didn’t see my legs come in at the end so that’s where it is, but holding a good pace, happy with the morning swim and a fast time as well, I’m pretty happy."
The reigning world champion in the event, Wiffen went out in the last of the four heats with 31 swimmers competing for just eight places. His PB and European record of 7:39.19 was almost seven seconds inside the man sitting in eight after those first three heats.
It was always well within his compass, basically, even in a heat alongside two world-class Australians: number one seed Sam Short and Elijah Winnington who has already won a silver in the 400m at these 2024 Games.
In the end, Wiffen was the fastest in the entire field of 31, by over a second.
He may have been able to poke holes in his own performance but he was conscious too that his time was just 0.4 seconds off the Olympic record set three years ago by Mykhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine.
And there’s more.
Wiffen finished fourth in the World Championships last year. The winner in Fukuoka that time was Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui and he isn’t here in Paris. Silver medallist back then was Australia’s Sam Short who hasn’t made Tuesday’s final.
There’s a gold medal there to grab, no doubt about that.
“Any medal is good, it’s my first race here, it’s my first time being in contention for an Olympic medal so I’ll take any medal, whatever colour, and then we got another two races after this and I’m looking forward to the one in the Seine, especially.”
The 1500m and the 10km open water swim are his other areas of interest here. Not for now, though. History beckons.