Daniel Wiffen prepared and poised to swim into Olympic history

In his first Olympic final, Wiffen will be going for gold on Tuesday night.

Daniel Wiffen in action during the men's 800m freestyle heats at the Paris La Défense Arena during the 2024 Olympic Games. Photo by Ian MacNicol/Sportsfile

The wardrobe in Daniel Wiffen’s basic college dorm in Loughborough is still decorated with pictures of the Armagh man in the Tokyo Aquatics Centre three years ago. They are reminders of his first experience of the big show, motivations every time he needs a shirt.

They are also relics.

His teenage years had only ended earlier that month. The national records he set in the 800m and 1500m were mere footnotes at the back end of a swim meet where Mona McSharry’s achievement in making an actual Olympic final had demanded the attention.

We talk about shaving fractions of seconds off times in the pool. Wiffen has taken a hacksaw to his - admittedly in a much longer event that lends itself to greater advances - but there is no denying the difference between then and now.

He has taken over 16 seconds off his 800m freestyle mark since. The 7:39.19 he set when finishing fourth in last year’s World Championships in Fukuoka stands as a European record. He’s also stripped over 33 seconds from his 1500m freestyle time.

Tokyo and Paris? Worlds apart.

“Completely different,” he said on Monday shortly after dominating his 800m heat at the La Defense Arena. “In Tokyo I was just there really [as a qualifier], and just tried to keep progressing. The past three years have been a blast for me.” 

It’s in the 800 on Tuesday night where he will go for gold in what is, lets not forget, his first Olympic final. He made it there by finishing fastest of the 31 swimmers in the heats, his 7:41.53 over half-a-second better than his closest rival.

His reaction impressed more than the time. The Olympic record, set in Tokyo by Ukraine’s Mykhailo Romanchuk, is just 0.25 seconds better. Wiffen emerged from the pool having recorded his third fastest time ever and then proceeded to pick holes in it.

The message was simple and without conceit: there’s more to come. Better.

“We’ll save that for tomorrow night,” he said of Romanchuk’s mark. There is a matter-of-factness about Wiffen that delivers searing honesty without a shred of boastfulness, or its mirror image, false modesty. He says it as he sees it.

John Rudd, the high-performance director for Swim Ireland describes a “binary” type of character who will tell you what he feels and thinks, someone of boundless confidence whose work ethic has delivered improvements to his technique and his tactics and strategy.

“If he feels he can win he will tell you he can win,” said Rudd.

The Englishman was speaking after Wiffen’s 800m and 1500m golds at the 2024 World Championships in Doha at the start of the year. Five of the eight 800m finalists in Doha, Wiffen included, will line up again here.

That includes the silver and bronze medallists, Elijah Winnington of Australia and Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri. Germany’s Sven Schwarz came fourth that day and another Italian, Luca De Tullio, came in seventh.

Bobby Finke, the American who was marked absent at the Worlds, is the reigning Olympic champion and the 2022 world champion. He recorded the fifth fastest time in the heats on Monday but his PB, 7:38.67, is the best in the field.

That’s just over half-a-second better than Wiffen’s. Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri’s best is only 0.08 behind that, although his was set five years ago, and there are a few other names notable by their absence this time.

Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui, who claimed gold at the 2023 Worlds in Fukuoka, is not in Paris. Australia’s Sam Short, who took silver in a race where Wiffen came fourth, failed to make this final having finished one place outside the top eight.

So, talk of gold and giddiness at the thought of Ireland continuing to flex its muscles in the Olympic pool after years of treading water is valid, but there is no guarantee of that or any other step on the podium at the evening’s end.

“Any medal is good,” said Wiffen. “It’s my first race here, it’s my first time being in contention for an Olympic medal, so I’ll take any medal, whatever colour, and then we’ve got another two races after this and I’m looking forward to the one in the Seine, especially.” 

That’s the 1500m and the 10k open water swim but there won’t be any more talk of that until the 800 is come and gone with Wiffen stressing the point that any one of the eight swimmers can do something special here.

He wasn’t just throwing that out there. The 23-year doesn’t need a picture of the men’s 400m freestyle on his wardrobe. The race, when Hafnaoui stormed to a completely unforeseen gold medal from an outside lane is tattooed in his mind.

The Tunisian was 18 at the time and 16th in the ranking entering that meet. His gold medal-winning performance made him the lowest-seeded winner in an Olympic pool since Athens in 2004. Wiffen will be keeping tabs on the full pool from his middle lane.

“I don’t know some of the names in the final, I’ll need to look out for them,” he said.

Everyone knows Wiffen now. Medal here and it will be his picture on walls all over the country.