Mixed emotions but bronze sheds Daniel Wiffen in an even better light

TWO OLYMPIC MEDALS: Daniel Wiffen with his 800m freestyle gold medal and 1500m freestyle bronze medal.  Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

You wonder was there a bit of Nathan Wiffen in the whole country early on Sunday evening. When the men’s 1500m freestyle final was done and Daniel Wiffen approached his family, he found his twin brother, well, kind of glaring at him.

It was Nathan who had predicted that the 800m final duly won by his bro last Tuesday ‘wouldn’t be a race’ when he spoke to the Irish Examiner. The 800 was closer than that, but Daniel did win it and it fed into a feeling that this second bid was in the bag.

Wasn’t the 1500 his better event? Wasn’t he world champion in both? And wasn’t he talking in a confident, uncomplicated way about it in a manner that is become more widespread and familiar to our ears now after years of win-or-lose-we’re-on-the-booze?

“Nathan was giving me this stare and I was like, ‘woah, what are you talking about here? I’ve got a bronze medal, leave me alone’, he joked. “Obviously Nathan’s going to be a massive critic to me but my family were still very happy.

“I’m going to ring Nathan after this. I’m sure he’s going to have something to say. I mean, I’m happy, I’m sure they’re proud of me, I’m just going to show them the gold medal and not the bronze when I see them.”

This is new to us. Like AI. It takes time. Where once we celebrated everything with aplomb, now we’re quantifying actual Olympic medals. Notions. Using slide-rule arguments and numbers and facts that may not even pre-date the opening ceremony.

This wasn’t the medal Wiffen wanted. That’s fine. The same held for the men’s double sculls pair of Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch last week when they claimed a bronze after talk had twirled around them taking silver or gold.

But they’re still actual medals, with bits of the Eiffel Tower and ‘Paris 2024’ chiselled in to them. We’re all entitled to point out that this wasn’t his best swim, and ask maybe why he didn’t go out faster himself, but let’s leave it at that and simply celebrate it.

Wiffen’s second medal brings to seven the number Ireland have won here, one across each of the last seven days.

That’s a record. And bronze feels a hell of a lot better when you can point to a World Championships last year when you finished fourth. Twice.

No-one wants to be there. Ask David Betlehem.

Wiffen is the first Irish male swimmer to reach an Olympic final. The first Irish swimmer, as he couched it, to win Olympic swimming medals in all his time watching and performing. Imagine if he had won bronze first and gold here. How would we all feel then?

See?

If nothing else, the experience of finishing almost nine seconds behind Bobby Finke’s world record time of 14:30.67, six shy of his own PB, and over five back from Gregorio Paltrinieri showed us Wiffen the man in an even better light.

He was as gracious in defeat as he had been confident pre-race. And equally calm. When he climbed out of the pool he made for the American and the Italian to congratulate them both and he juggled those feelings of happiness and disappointment with model maturity.

There were contradictions at times - Wiffen said at one point that he had expected Finke to go out fast before saying the opposite later – but he broke down the race without emotion and a mostly clear set of eyes as the adrenalin lost its battle with fatigue.

There were 300 metres gone when he finally noticed Finke’s legs so far ahead of him, probably because Paltrinieri had blocked his view to the wide lane. When he responded around the halfway mark there was a needle too close to the red.

“When you are behind in the 1500 it is hard to get your momentum back, and then you could see I was catching, but when I was nearly catching up I was kind of finished because it took so much mental energy out of me to catch that up.” 

He’d done his usual 100m splits in the morning and wasn’t hitting them with his usual times. Recovery took a bit longer before he could manage numbers acceptable to him, but he emerged onto the pool deck feeling like he was in the best shape of his life.

And nervous as hell.

For all his infectious self-confidence, Wiffen’s openness extends both ways. He was “s****ing” himself all four times on that short walk from call room to starters’ blocks and the emotional expense of the last week just must have taken a toll.

As it had ion the 200m breaststroke with Mona McSharry after her 100m bronze.

He still has the 10k open water swim to come later this week, but the mind wandered back to the wee small hours of Tuesday night even while this latest chapter was sinking, and to the madness of it all and to the fact that it took him two hours to get into bed.

“I looked at the medal and I was like, ‘all right, going back in the box and we're not going to look until the meet's done’. I mean, it's just emotionally draining. And now I'm happy to be done and happy to move my sights onto a new event to become a nice ‘two sport’ Olympian.”