Irish swimmer Conor Ferguson on 8 years chasing fractions of a second

The Belfast man is aiming to make an impact in Paris this summer.

Conor Ferguson pictured ahead of the Swim Ireland Irish Open Championships and Olympic Trials. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady

Conor Ferguson has spent eight years chasing tenths of a second. These are the infinitesimal margins determining who goes to an Olympic Games and who does not and it’s a search made all the more elusive by the fact that the bar keeps inching higher.

He was still only in his mid-teens, and in a phase of his career when pieces of time were being broken off his PBs like chunks of rustic bread, when he came up painfully shy of booking a place at the Rio Games.