Finn McGeever came into the 400m freestyle final with the slowest time but left a big mark at the Irish National Swimming Championships on Thursday.
“I knew I could do a lot better than what my PB was but no can’t say I was expecting that”
The Irish National Swimming trials in Dublin this week has brought some surprises with records broken and people qualifying for the Tokyo Olympic games.
Well, that was exciting! This evenings @swimireland trials saw an exciting new senior record from Finn McGeever, beating Jack McMillian’s 2019 400 metre freestyle record with a time of 3.52.83!
He also has a very important lab report for the evening to tuck into 😂 pic.twitter.com/lKKEDb7oKH
— Joanne O’ Riordan (@JoanneOR_Ox) April 22, 2021
But the biggest surprise may have come in the men’s 400m freestyle final. 17-year-old Liam Custer came in as favourite with Dean Power next and then Finn McGeever.
Finn, a 20-year-old University of Limerick student, started fast but was expected to fade off towards the end of the race.
To the small crowds surprise the lead kept growing until he finished in first breaking the Irish record for the event in a time of 5.52.83.
In his post-race interview he shared what spurred him on: “Between you and me, what got me through the race was that this was the last (400m freestyle) that I was going to do for a while like, you know, I’ve just got (100m freestyle) tomorrow, it’s all down hill from here, I’m just delighted with that.”
Finn is already part of the 4x200m freestyle relay that is on the cusp of qualifying for Tokyo. The record that he broke belonged to his teammate Jack McMillan for three years.
The young Tipperary swimmer came into the final as the slowest of the three, but he managed to knock almost a whopping 15 seconds off his preliminary time.
Although he managed to set a new Irish record with his nearest competitor Custer coming in seven seconds behind him, he would need to cut another six seconds from his time to make the Olympic qualifying time.
Life seems to be coming fast for the young athlete, but he remains down to earth saying that he won’t be relaxing or celebrating the new record.
“Well I’ve actually got a lab report due tomorrow at 5pm so I got to hack away at that.”
