LAST UPDATE | 17 Feb
MONA MCSHARRY HAS progressed to her third final at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, making it a clean sweep of deciders across the 50m, 100m and 200m Breaststroke events.
McSharry, who was fifth in both the 100m and 200m earlier this week, finished fourth in 30.57 in this evening’s semi-final.
The time, faster than this morning’s 30.72 which saw her finish second in her heat, means the Sligo woman advances in sixth place overall.
“It’s great,” McSharry said afterwards. “I think being able to go back-to-back racing in multiple events and being able to make it back to multiple finals is really encouraging, and I get to go again tomorrow (4.09pm).
“The 50m’s just a splash and dash so it’s a nice one to finish on.”
This morning, Daniel Wiffen marginally qualified for the 1500m Freestyle final as he looks to continue his brilliant run in Doha.
The newly-crowned 800m Freestyle world champion won his heat in 14:54.29 to reach his third final of the week, but was just eight tenths of a second inside the top eight for tomorrow’s final.
Wiffen — who has a best time in the event of 14:34.91 — goes in as the sixth seed.
“I’m good, I tried to take it as easy as possible and just pace it to get back,” Wiffen said afterwards. “I’m in sixth position going in. I could have missed it by .8 there, so I’m pretty happy with that. I did what I wanted to do, it was fun for me.
“I knew exactly my pace. I think I’m getting quite good at hitting a certain pace in training and in my warm-up, I knew what was going to make it back. To be honest, it’s faster than what I thought was going to make it back, but I’m just happy to be on the right side of it.”
“I’m just going to try and go in with the same attitude, pace it how I want to pace it, post a good time and hopefully get on the podium,” the 22-year-old added on tomorrow’s final, which gets underway at 4.16pm Irish time.
2023 World Champion Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia is out of the deciding race, after finishing 17th in 15:09.02.
Erin Riordan closed out her championships with a first individual race at World level. She clocked 26.26 in the 50m Freestyle, finishing 43rd overall.
As well as McSharry and Wiffen’s finals tomorrow, the Ireland Men’s 4x100m Medley Relay will compete for an Olympic Games spot. The top 16 teams qualify for Paris. They currently sit 13th place overall and will look to improve on last year’s time of 3:35.03.
The women’s team won’t compete, but they will learn their Olympic fate by the end of the day. They are also in 13th place, with a time of 4:01.25.
