Mona McSharry builds on bronze medal by making another semi-final
ON THE MARCH AGAIN: Mona McSharry was back in action early on Wednesday morning, her 200m breaststroke heat time of 2:23.98 easily good enough to see her into the semis later in the evening. Pic: AP Photo/Ashley Landis.
Athletes spend years living monastic existences, weighing every gram of brown rice and hitting the hay exhausted before the nine o’clock news ends.
Then they come to an Olympics and all that structure and familiarity gets lost in the vortex.
Mona McSharry won a bronze 100m breaststroke medal deep into the Parisian night on Monday. She was back in action here early on Wednesday morning, her 200m breaststroke heat time of 2:23.98 easily good enough to see her into the semis later in the evening.
The hours in between those two swims? Hectic.
“Yeah, I went to bed around 4:30 or five [on Monday night/Tuesday morning] but I slept in until 10:30 so I got a good six hours of sleep. It just took a while for my mind to calm down but it was good.”
She still hasn’t dared to peek through the door that is social media for fear that the flood of goodwill will overwhelm.
She cried a river of - good - tears after her medal swim and then returned to the pool on Tuesday night to roar Daniel Wiffen on to gold.
It’s all been utterly brilliant but a person can only take so much before it drains the batteries.
“Honestly, the mind was more tired than the body. It’s just been a lot and yesterday was just a chill day for me,” she said.
“I was trying my best not to expend too much energy mentally and this morning I was definitely a bit quiet but I think I’m always like that going into a 200. It was a good race so hopefully I can bring more energy tonight.”
Winning that medal won’t change her approach now, she said. The 200m is not her strongest suit but she has worked at it and posted increasingly encouraging times at the distance in recent months.
McSharry broke the Irish record with a 2:22.49 in Vancouver not long before the Olympics. She finished fifth in this race at the World Championships in Doha back in February. So there is scope there for hope that another final could be in the offing.
Tatjana Smith, the South African who won gold in Monday’s 100m breaststroke, is in McSharry’s semi-final later. So is the USA’s Lilly King who was one of two swimmers the Irishwoman beat to the bronze by 0.01 second.
Among the field in the first semi-final is China’s Ye Shiwen whose astonishing times in winning the 200m and 400m Individual Medleys as a 16-year old at London 2012 were described as "unbelievable” and “disturbing” by a US administrator.
John Leonard, who was then the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, claimed at the time that they were reminiscent of Michelle Smith’s swims at Atlanta in 1996, and Chinese swimming is under scrutiny again at these Games.
It was revealed earlier this year that 23 Chinese swimmers failed an anti-doping test over six months out from the Tokyo Olympics, only to be cleared by their own country’s anti-doping agency on the grounds of a mass food contamination at their accommodation.
The World Anti-Doping Agency chose not to challenge the decision.
McSharry was beaten to the silver medal on Monday by Chinese swimmer Qianting Tang, who was not one of the 23 swimmers to fail tests before Tokyo, but the Sligo woman is one of many swimmers here being asked for their take on all this.
“I obviously don’t agree with doping but I haven’t really done a lot of research on what happened with that because it’s very much out of my control so I just kind of leave it parked where it is.
“There’s not a lot I can do other than probably get worked up about it so I just don’t think about it, honestly.”
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