Olympic 800m freestyle champion Daniel Wiffen and his twin brother Nathan Wiffen won their respective heats of the 400m freestyle at the Irish Open Championships in Bangor to advance to this evening’s finals session in first and second place overall.
Daniel Wiffen, who has won the 1500m title earlier this week, swam a time of three minutes 50.62 seconds to go under the European qualifying time for the event.
Olympic finalist Ellen Walshe will be targeting a fourth gold medal at the meet in the women’s equivalent having already claimed national titles in the 100m and 200m butterfly and the 400m individual medley.
Walshe is the third fastest qualifier into tonight’s final behind Victoria Catterson, who posted the fastest time of the morning session in 4:22.37 ahead of Sundays Well’s Clare Custer.
Mona McSharry, who set a new Irish record of 2:22.22 in Friday’s 200m breaststroke, put in a superb swim in the 100m breaststroke heats, clocking 1:06.33 – the fourth‑fastest swim in the world this year.
New York-born Jack Kelly, who has now declared for Ireland, kept his bid for a breaststroke triple on track as he was the only swimmer to dip under the one‑minute mark in the 100m breaststroke heats.
Kelly has already won 50m and 200m breaststroke titles.
Galway’s John Shortt led the qualifiers in the 200m backstroke as the 2025 World Junior and European champion, who set a new Irish record of 1:56.07 in the event at the Giant Open in Paris three weeks ago, ensured his place in lane four for the decider in a heat time of 2:00.63.
The 19-year-old has now achieved consideration times for all three backstroke events for the European Championships, which will take place in Paris in August.
Grace Davison, already crowned 100m and 200m freestyle champion this week, will head into this evening’s 200m backstroke final as top seed as the 18‑year‑old swam 2:14.88 to lead the qualifiers.
The finals are of the blocks at 5.30pm.