ELLEN KEANE (21), from Clontarf, is already a two-time Paralympian and a three-time world medallist in swimming, an all-rounder whose best events are 100m breaststroke, 200m individual medley (IM) and 100m butterfly.
She made a Paralympic final, in Beijing 2008, when she was only 13 and reached two finals in the 2012 Paralympics. She won two bronze medals at the 2013 IPC World Championships and another last year.
She combines training, six days a-week at the National Aquatic Centre (NAC) in Abbotstown, with studying culinary entrepreneurship at DIT. She is just back from the 2016 European Championships in Funchal, Portugal, where she reached finals in five of her six events.
Ellen is an Allianz sports and brand ambassador and will be writing a monthly diary in the build-up to the 2016 Paralympic Games:
May has been such a busy month for me. In the week leading into the Europeans all of my second-year assignments were due, I also had a couple of practical exams and now I’ve come back to written exams. It’s been tough. I get so stressed out about exams and, even without realising it, I’m wasting so much energy.
I didn’t swim well at Europeans and when Jim Laverty, our head coach, asked me what was wrong I had to explain just how tired I felt. He was like, ‘OK, this isn’t the main goal this year so just try your hardest and enjoy yourself, there’s no expectation on you.’ I was really grateful for that but, at the same time, I didn’t like swimming so slowly. The first few races were quite good but then I just felt so tired.
The problem with breaststroke, which is my main event, is that technique can so easily come and go. When my timing goes I get so frustrated. I knew pretty quickly that it didn’t feel good and wasn’t going to go well. It’s a stroke where you have to stay so controlled. When your timing goes you just need to stay relaxed. There’s nothing worse than a breaststroker who stresses out. Me and my coach Dave Malone always say that’s what I am… ‘a stressy breaststroker!’
The funny thing was I did a massive personal best in backstroke and nearly won a medal! I’m not a backstroker at all. The only reason I do it is for the individual medley but I’d been practising it loads in training and thought I might as well enter it. Turned out I got a PB by two and a half seconds and was just .2 of a second off a medal. Dave was like, ‘If you’d won a medal in backstroke I could have retired!’
It was so good to see Nicole (Turner, who won three medals) do so well, she deserved it.
She sat beside me every day, we were ‘bus-buddies’! When you win a medal you get a little teddy and she gave each of them a name, it was so cute. The first one was called ‘Jim-Bob’ after Jim. The second one was ‘Albee’ because the commentators couldn’t pronounce the v in Ailbhe Kelly’s name. And she called the last one ‘Squishy’ because that’s what (Irish teammate James) Scully calls me.
Nicole is only 13, the same age I was when I went to my first Paralympics. I had told her to just enjoy herself and not worry but maybe my best advice was about her hair. Swimmers always have our hair in a bun under our hats and, when I won my first international medal, I forgot to change it for the presentation. I’ve always regretted that — it’s a horrendous photo! So I had warned her not to have a ‘swimmer’s bun.’ When she won her medals I was like, ‘Nicole, take your hair down!’
The DIT exams officially started the week after I came home but I’d asked my tutor to ensure I didn’t have one the next day and they were really good about that. I only have the two (human resource management and legal studies) but they involve a lot of study. I’d brought my laptop to Portugal. I got some work done on the journey out because it was a four-hour flight but, once there, I actually got no more done because, when you’re not swimming you need to recover. My priority now is to get my exams finished and then think about Rio.
I enjoyed Europeans but it was really bad timing for me. I wanted to swim fast but wasn’t and got stressed about it. Now that they’re over, I’m swimming really well. My breaststroke is actually back now… it’s just a week too late!”
Allianz is an official partner to Paralympics Ireland and global partner to the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) – go to www.allianz.ie for more detail.
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