Coach angry as `time trial' is not accepted

The Irish swimming spotlight switched from Lausanne to the relatively less important but nonetheless controversial happening at the Watling Street Guinness pool in Dublin at the weekend.

Steven Manley is at the opposite end of the aquatic scale to Michelle de Bruin. The 16-year-old Dubliner is at the foothills of a promising international career that he hopes will see him at the European junior championships in Budapest in August.

On Sunday evening he left the Guinness pool, following a successful time trial, swam alone, for the 200 metres individual medley in a qualifying attempt for the Europeans, happy in the knowledge that the purchasing of his flight ticket was all that remained to be done. On the official electronic timing device and with a full complement of officials present, he recorded a time of two minutes 08.4 seconds, inside the qualifying time of 2:08.30.

But there is a problem with time trials as set out in Swim Ireland's handbook in that they are not listed as legitimate routes for qualification. The stipulation under "Official Times" reads "All consideration and qualifying standards must be achieved in open competition where electronic timing is used."

Manley's coach at Terenure College SC Kevin Williamson, is furious even to imagine that anything like this could prevent his swimmer from realising his immediate dream. He claims that he was informed, through Swim Ireland in the first place, to have his swimmer do a time trial.

An obvious opportunity for Manley to make his qualifying bid and beat the May 31st deadline would have been in the interprovincial championships but these tests were postponed until early in June.

Williamson was advised last evening by Dave McCullough, Swim Ireland's Director of swimming, to submit the details of Manley's time for observation. Andrew Bree (Ulster) and Muiris Reidy (Leinster) have already qualified for the championships to be staged in Budapest from August 5th-8th.

Nick O'Hare swam his best 50 metres this year, 24.3 seconds, in the Olympic pool in Athens on Sunday. O'Hare is poised for his first attempt at qualifying for the European championships in Charleroi, Belgium, next Saturday.