Shane Ryan aiming high for Tokyo, two years after hitting rock bottom

GAME FACE ON: Shane Ryan has already been officially selected by Swim Ireland for this year’s delayed Games. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Shane Ryan will compete in Tokyo this summer with a medal on his mind but it isn’t two years since the Rio 2016 Olympian thought about quitting the pool.

Ireland’s first world swimming medallist in 2018, he has already been officially selected by Swim Ireland for this year’s delayed Games, but he arrived in Korea for the FINA World Championships in 2019 completely out of sorts.

“I was 99kg,” he explained yesterday before yet another training session at the National Aquatic Centre. “I’m 6’ 6”, I’m a big guy, so that doesn’t seem like a lot, but that wasn’t good weight. I just felt like a slug going through the water.

“So, I really, really struggled, because I wasn’t hitting the times, I wasn’t fast at all. It was one of the worst meets I’ve ever been at. In my own head, I was like, ‘what’s going on? Do I need to stop swimming?’”

A chirpy and sociable type of guy, Ryan opened up to his coaches at the time and things began to improve. Then Covid hit and he found himself living on his own in Tyrrelstown on the outskirts of Dublin for three months of lockdown without seeing a single soul.

That was tough but it didn’t knock him off kilter. He came out of that first lockdown lighter but stronger before posting a succession of Irish records during the course of the International Swimming League (ISL) meet held inside a Budapest bubble late last year.

He looks back at that turning point and shares the lesson learned.

“If you need to go talk to someone, go talk to someone. That’s really important, and especially now.

If you’re struggling, you have to go talk to someone. That’s helped me to understand what’s the best approach, what can you do, even though you’re complaining.

Ryan talks about “being a contender” for medals in Tokyo. A semi-finalist at the 2016 Games, when he was just an 84kg “toothpick-young” kid of 22, he is weighing in 9kgs heavier now — but six lighter than Korea — and with four championship medals to his name.

His PB will have to come down by a few 10ths of a second just to make the final this summer but he has produced big performances at big times twice before: At the NCAA Big Ten conference meet in 2017 and again a year later at that World Short Course championship.

The NCAA event boasted powerhouse colleges such as Ohio State, Michigan, and Nebraska but Ryan rose to the occasion by breaking a Big Ten record, winning the 100m backstroke and posting second in both the 50m and 100m freestyle. Everything clicked.

He came away with bronze from the latter meet, in Hangzhou, and this despite swimming the 100m freestyle the day before that final and being drug tested on the day itself. All of which goes to show that conditions and conditioning don’t always need to be perfect to excel.

Being chosen for Tokyo back in January came as a relief and allowed him to press the reset button. There is no need now to peak at the April meet being put on at Abbotstown for swimmers seeking qualifying times but that’s not to say that the pressure is all off.

The Europeans in May offer the opportunity for the men’s 400m medley to post their passage to the Games. Currently ranked 13th in the world, the top 16 will make it and Ryan can help enormously there by swimming better than he did in the event at the 2019 Worlds.

He knows as much himself.

The wider issue is whether anyone should be going at all.

Not everyone, whether in Japan itself or around the world, is on board with the idea of an Olympics pressing ahead in the midst of a pandemic but Ryan always held the belief the show would go on and his confidence in the process by which it will be run off was bolstered by his time at that ISL meet in Hungary.

Roughly 1,200 people were contained in a six-week holding camp for that event.

Two tests were required before arrival, then one every five days on site. Fines of €1,000 and point deductions for teams were used as deterrents to anyone breaching social distance rules.

“Everyone followed that, knew it was a great opportunity, and if people understand that mentality (then) it’s for the greater good. And if you can get vaccinated, get vaccinated, so I think the Olympics should definitely happen, will happen.

"It’s the right call, because it gives some sense of hope, a glimmer of inspiration.

These Olympics could inspire people who are down, who aren’t in a good mental state, who could see, ‘wow they did that’, and inspire them as well.