Erin Riordan poised for Paris Olympics just months after retirement

LATE CALL UP: Swimmer Erin Riordan during the Team Ireland Paris 2024 team announcement for Aquatics at the National Aquatic Centre on the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Heard the one about the Irish swimmer going to the Paris Olympic who retired just a few months ago? Erin Riordan’s story is a prime example of truth trumping any manner of fiction.

It looked like Ireland’s 400m freestyle relay team had missed the boat after being edged agonisingly into a ranking of 17th on the back of the World Championships in Doha at the start of the year. That left them one slot outside the cutoff point. One.

It was Riordan’s cue to disembark and start life anew.

“My mum lives in Portugal so I went back there for four weeks. I took up running and I was completely done swimming. So it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but I’m glad I’m here.” 

Glad and surprised.

It’s almost unheard of for a nation to pull out of an Olympic relay but Ireland’s quartet got a belated call to say that the Japanese team had not met their own national standards and would not be travelling.

“So I was back on a flight, came straight back, and it’s been stressful, a lot of it, I would say. The whole time it was, ‘We think they’re going to pull out, we’re not sure. Keep training, it might happen’. And then it happened.

So it is that Riordan, Victoria Catterson, Grace Davison and Danielle Hill will be the first women’s relay team to represent this country in an Olympic pool since Munich in 1972 and Riordan has found herself slipping seamlessly back into the routine despite that hiatus.

“Even getting through those two qualifications of Worlds was really tough, and it’s like a lot of pressure and a lot of emotions go into it,” she said of the original decision to quit.

“When it got taken away, it was just a lot and I just needed my time away from the pool. I think it served me well in the long run because I came back and I swam really well after those few weeks off. It gave me a bit of a reset.” 

Riordan’s route to Paris has been unusual since the start. Both of her parents are Irish but she was born in Japan and there has been spent time living in Switzerland, Hong Kong and the UK. Her first time experiencing daily life in Ireland came in 2017 when she started college here.

It was her father’s job that necessitated this peripatetic lifestyle. All told, it’s not the sort of pathway you might design for someone with ambitions to be an Olympian but Riordan is sure it has been no disadvantage.

“I don’t think so,” said the 24-year old. “I think especially as a younger athlete, I got such a wide perspective of how so many different teams train, so many coaches, coach.

“A lot of people I grew up with… One of them is Siobhan Haughey. She is actually Irish and Hong Kongese, I trained with her in Hong Kong, and her base, all that kind of stuff, it gave me a wide view of the swimming world and it’s helped me as an athlete, I would say.” 

Haugheys paternal grand uncle was, of course, none other than former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey. A two-time silver medalist in the 100m and 200m freestyle in Tokyo, she will be targeting more podium success in Paris.

Riordan trained with her from the age of eight through to ten. By the time Haughey was 12 it was clear that she was destined for greatness. And as for Riordan, and whether this Olympic bonus will whet her appetite to stay in the pool beyond it… 

“We’ll see. I’m starting to look at work, a real career! I’ll see what I can manage while doing that as well.”