Daniel Wiffen ready to 'go and party for three days' after Open Water swim

The Armagh native came home in 18th in his event debut. 

CLOCKING OFF:  Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen after finishing 18th to round out his Games. Pic: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Daniel Wiffen plans to “go and party for three days” after completing his Olympics with a gruelling 10km marathon swim in the Seine on Friday morning.

A gold and bronze medallist in the pool at these Games, he took on the Open Water swim to tick a number of boxes: become a ‘dual sport’ Olympian, get his picture with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and maybe even grab another medal.

Two out of three sure ain’t bad.

His 18th place in a starting field of just 29 was no small thing. Of the handful of swimmers who qualified via their efforts in the 800m and 1500m freestyle in the La Defense Arena pool, Wiffen was furthest up the food chain by the end.

Hungary’s Kristof Rasovszky took gold in a time of 1:50.52.7 with Oliver Klemet of Germany and Hungary’s David Betlehem taking bronze by touching the end board 0.6 seconds ahead of the Italian Domenico Acerenza.

Wiffen came in six minutes and 27 seconds behind the winner.

“Right now I am going to go and party for three days,” he said. “Then I am going to do the homecoming in Dublin. I'll be on the open top bus and after that I've got a homecoming in Magheralin on Tuesday and my friend’s coming over to Ireland.

“I’m going to show him around and then I’m going on holiday to Barcelona, Bali, Italy. I’m going all over. It’s going to be a lot of fun and then I’ll come back and start training again for the World Short Course Championships.” 

Wiffen clutched a bottle of Coca Cola and a gel drink as he spoke. He had, he reckoned, burned anything up to 10,000 calories in the course of his almost two-hour swim and he was engaging as usual when describing his first ever experience in this event.

“It’s the worst and best thing I’ve ever done in my life. The reason why it was the worst is because it was the most painful thing I’ve ever done. But, in terms of best, it’s because I’m happy to say I’m an Olympic open-water swimmer, dual-sport athlete, and a contact-sport athlete as well.” He was punched in the face pretty much on the off, got hit in the head three times and someone kicked him in the stomach. These are normal trials in this arena. He may also have pulled his groin halfway through. By the last lap he felt “absolutely dead”.

Four of the starters didn’t actually finish. Wiffen held similar thoughts but kept going.

“No, I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty easy to finish. You just have to, like, go slow. To be honest, I got to halfway and I was thinking about getting out when I was really hurting but I saw that I wasn’t last.

“I thought, ‘do you know what? I can just hold the position and finish the race’. And I actually finished higher than I did in the 1500m in Tokyo so it’s only up from here.” 

Only in the pool, though. This, he said, was likely his first and last Open Water swim.