Opening day will set the tone for Irish challenge

SWIMMING EUROPEAN SHORT COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS:EIGHT OF Ireland's 10-strong squad will be in action in individual events on the opening day of the European Short Course (25-metre) Championships which get under way in Istanbul today.

The men’s 50 metres medley relay squad will also hit the pool today.

The squad consists of four men – veteran Donal O’Neill, Conor Leaney, Steven McQuillan and Michael Dawson – while Peter Banks, the high performance coach, has brought six female swimmers to Turkey in Olympians Melanie Nocher and Aishling Cooney; Gráinne Murphy, who competes with Limerick team-mates Nuala Murphy and Niamh O’Sullivan, and Bangor’s Claire Dawson.

The squad, however, does not include the four US-based swimmers, Andrew Bree, Barry Murphy, Karl Burdis and Ryan Harrison, who all swam in the World Championships in Rome earlier this year, but are staying put in the US this time.

Cooney and Nocher are first into the water today in the 100 metres backstroke heats.

Cooney recently became the first Irish woman under one minute for the event when she swam 59.89 seconds at the Irish National Championships in Abbotstown, while Nocher will use the event to build to her favoured event, the 200 backstroke, the heats of which are on Sunday.

Nocher finished fifth in the final of the 200 backstroke in Croatia last year.

She, along with Cooney, O’Sullivan and Dawson, will also take part in the heats of the 100 metres freestyle on the opening day of competition here.

Gráinne Murphy, the teenage sensation who won three gold medals at the European junior championships in Prague in July, takes part in the 200 metres individual medley heats today, and she could go close to beating Michelle de Bruin’s 14-year-old Irish record of 2.13.46.

“It will be interesting to see how the likes of Gráinne Murphy perform at the Europeans coming off the World Championships in the summer, because it’s on our projection that we have some finalists again this year,” said Banks.

S “Gráinne, along with Niamh O’Sullivan and Nuala Murphy, have gone to altitude training with their coach Ronald Claes and it will be good to see how they respond to that.”

Gráinne Murphy may, though, be looking at the Europeans as a transitional event as she may switch to a textile suit and forgo the controversial polyurethane body suit that will be banned from January.

“She may swim without the fast suits and see how that progresses. I look at Istanbul as perhaps a developmental meet for her, in the sense that it will help in her race-craft,” Banks added.

“She swam really well at altitude and her coach was very pleased with her and we want to see how that translates into competition.”

Other Irish competitors in action on the opening day of the four-day meet are McQuillan (100 butterfly), Dawson (100 breaststroke) and Leaney (400 freestyle), who all line up with O’Neill in the heats of the 50 metres medley relay.