{"id":175348,"date":"2025-12-04T20:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/175348\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T20:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:33:07","slug":"wiffen-wins-european-gold-in-1500m-freestyle-in-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/175348\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiffen wins European gold in 1500m freestyle in Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Wiffen has won a gold medal in the men’s 1500m freestyle at the European Short Course Championships in Poland.<\/p>\n

Wiffen battled with Hungarian Zalan Sarkany throughout the race, rarely overtaking him, with a close finish inevitable.<\/p>\n

However, the Irishman eventually got on top in the final three lengths to win in a time of 14:13.96, over a second and a half ahead of Sarkany.<\/p>\n

Germany’s Florian Wellbrock took bronze.<\/p>\n

There was another medal for Ireland as Evan Bailey placed equal third in the men’s 200m freestyle event.<\/p>\n

Bailey posted a national record on Wednesday evening to advance to the final, and managed to swim quicker on Thursday, clocking 1:41.48 to take over half a second off the previous record to take bronze.<\/p>\n

Kamil Sieradadzki of Poland posted the same time with judges unable to separate them.<\/p>\n

Belfast-born Jack McMillan took the silver for Great Britain in 1:40.94 with team-mate Scott Duncan touching first to take gold in 1:40.54.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nEllen Walshe had been looking to add to the European short course bronze she won in the 400m individual medley in 2023<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Ellen Walshe finished seventh in the women’s 100m individual medley final.<\/p>\n

Swimming out of lane two, the 24-year-old was up against it with the leading lights taking it out hard.<\/p>\n

The formidable Marrit Steenbergen of the Netherlands took gold in a European record time of 56.26, with Beligium\u2019s Roos Vanotterdijk second and Anastasia Gorbenko of Israel taking bronze.<\/p>\n

Walshe posted a time of 58.62, slower than her semi-final, and over two seconds down on Steenbergen.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old took the decision to sacrifice the 100m butterfly semi-finals after winning her heat this morning as it was scheduled an hour and a half after her individual medley final.<\/p>\n

The Templeogue woman has a busy schedule over the coming days as she is also tackling the 200m individual medley, 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley.<\/p>\n

Ellie McCartney set a national record to win her semi-final in the women’s 200m breaststroke 2:18.81, beating her personal best by over a second in a fantastic performance.<\/p>\n

The Enniskillen native led throughout and defeated Belgium’s Roos Vanotterdijk by 1.09 seconds.<\/p>\n

She will take her place in the final on Friday at 7.12pm.<\/p>\n

\"John
\nJohn Shortt was back in action after a golden performance the night before<\/p>\n

Fresh from winning gold in the men’s 200m backstroke<\/a> on Wednesday night, John Shortt set a new Irish record as he qualified for the final of the 100m backstroke.<\/p>\n

The Galway man touched the wall in fourth in a time of 50.16, breaking the record that had stood since 2020.<\/p>\n

In the men’s 200 breaststroke, Eoin Corby also qualified for the semis after finishing seventh in his heat.<\/p>\n

Taking part in the penultimate heat which featured seeded competitors, the Limerick swimmer’s 2:06.47 was the 17th fastest time and proved just enough to squeeze through to the next round which is scheduled for 6.42pm Irish time.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen so many 2:05s in any European heats in my life,” he said. “<\/p>\n

It’s extremely fast heats. It’s all about quick morning swims here, so I’m happy with that, but I think I’ve a lot more in me, so hopefully I can produce something a bit quicker tonight because it’s incredibly close and even if I improved by a second, I’m pretty sure that puts me in third or something, so it’s very stupidly quick here.”<\/p>\n

However, Jack Cassin narrowly missed out on the semi-finals of the men’s 100m butterfly with his 51.49 just 0.14 outside the final qualification place. Lisburn swimmer Matthew Hamilton also did not advance after a third-placed finish in his heat in 52.60.<\/p>\n

Watch the action from Lublin live on Eurovision Sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Wiffen has won a gold medal in the men’s 1500m freestyle at the European Short Course Championships…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-175348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}