It was a quiet day for the Irish camp today at the swimming World Championships with no Irish in action today. The team trained at the main competition pool this morning then relaxed at the team hotel before some headed back to the pool for a second swim in the afternoon.
Other squads also taking up residence with the Irish team at the Sheraton Pudong Hotel this week include those from Australia, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Sweden.
Ireland features in one event tomorrow, on day 5 of the competition. Sycerika McMahon, Melanie Nocher, Clare Dawson and Grainne Murphy (in this order) will make history in becoming the first Irish women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team to compete at a World Championships.
The ultimate goal of the quartet and for Swim Ireland’s National Performance Director Peter Banks is to finish within the top 12 nations. If the squad achieves this, then an Irish women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team will automatically qualify for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
The FINA relay selection policy further sets out additional criteria around the specific make-up of the Olympic relay team – one point being that at least two of the selected relay swimmers must have achieved the Olympic qualifying time (OQT) in an individual event in order for the relay to be nominated.
Heats get underway tomorrow at 9:00am local time (2:00am Irish time).
