Swim Ireland has announced its International squads for this summer’s European Junior and Senior Long Course Swimming Championships The Senior European team, who will compete in Budapest from 9 – 15 August is comprised of 7 swimmers; made up of 4 women (Clare Dawson, Melanie Nocher, Grainne Murphy, Nuala Murphy) and 3 men (Andrew Bree, Ryan Harrison, Barry Murphy). The Junior squad who compete in Helsinki from 14 – 18 July, features 3 of Ireland’s outstanding Junior swimmers; Tara Dunne, Sycerika McMahon and Shani Stallard.
.The Senior European squad, accompanied by National Performance Director Peter Banks, Coaches Ronald Claes and support staff Alan Nocher (manager), Anne Burdis (assistant manager), Sarah-Jane McDonnell (physiotherapist), Conor Osborough (biomechanist) and Chantal Gibney (media liaison) will depart Dublin on 26th July for a training camp in Slovenia, where they will be based before the Championships.
US-based Ryan Harrison, who finished in fifth place recently in the final of the 200m freestyle at the Charlotte Ultra Swim Grand Prix Meet against Olympic medallists Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, will make the NAC-High Performance Centre in Dublin his training base this summer, while other US-based swimmers Barry Murphy will train under Mike Bottom at the University of Michigan and Andrew Bree has also made a recent move – to the University of Southern California where he trains alongside Olympic Champion Kitijima under Dave Salo. Olympian Melanie Nocher will remain at her Loughborough base, as will Clare Dawson who trains at Sterling University. Both Nuala and Grainne Murphy (not related) will be based out of Swim Ireland’s Limerick High Performance Centre.
Meanwhile, Irish swimmers were in action last week at the Mare Nostrum series, which saw the best in Europe compete across three meets back to back, in three cities – Monaco, Canet and Barcelona. There were a number of top 8 finishes by Irish swimmers, namely Andrew Bree, Nuala Murphy and Grainne Murphy as well as an impressive top 16 finish from sixteen-year old Shani Stallard,
