Swim Ireland will host an Irish Winter Meet at the National Aquatic Centre from Thursday to Saturday this week.
A small and select group of Ireland’s elite athletes including Darragh Greene, Shane Ryan and Danielle Hill will have their first races in a 50m pool since March, with the competition taking a unique format of short course (25m pool) heats and long course (50m pool) finals.
Speaking ahead of the meet, Swim Ireland National Performance Director Jon Rudd commented “We are very excited to be able to host this competition for the relatively small number of Performance athletes that are permitted to race at this time. It will be good to see where our potential Olympians for Tokyo and our other international prospects for 2021 are at this juncture. It is around 10% of those athletes that would normally race at this time that we are able to accommodate under the current regulations and what would have been a National Championships in more normal times is simply a racing opportunity against the stopwatch for our premier swimmers. The support that we have received from Sport Ireland and the National Aquatic Centre in being able to provide this competitive opportunity has been fantastic and we hope that it provides hope and stimulus for those in our swimming community that will be looking forward to returning to competition in 2021”
This meet replaces the Irish National Short Course Championships which would usually take place this weekend and would regularly attract up to 600 competing athletes in recent years.
