Daniel Wiffen will compete in the men’s Marathon race at the Paris Olympics, a 10km event taking place in the river Seine on Friday (starts 6.30am Irish time). He will be the first Irish swimmer to have participated in the event.
Wiffen has already won two medals at these games, a gold in the 800m freestyle event and a bronze in the 1500m frestyle.
A unique course has been designed in the heart of the capital on the stretch of river by the Pont Alexandre III bridge, where 33 athletes will compete for only the fifth iteration of the race. The event first became part of the Olympic roster at the 2008 Games in Beijing.
Most of the swimmers will be used to competing in the sea or lakes throughout the year, although it is not common for them to swim in a river where the currents are different, making the 2024 site unique.
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Tactics and how the swimmers adapt to the changing conditions as they swim both with the current and against it over the five laps are expected to come into play.
Wiffen will be one of the inexperienced swimmers in his first ever open water race but he will be familiar with many of the other competitors as he faced and beat several of them in the pool.
Germany’s Florian Wellbrock is the defending men’s champion from Tokyo 2020 and is back in Paris, as are the other podium swimmers from three years ago. Hungary’s Kristof Rasovszky was the World champion earlier this year, and Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri won silver (1,500m freestyle) and bronze (800m freestyle) in the pool last week.
The 23-year-old Wiffen, who became the first Irish male swimmer in history to win gold at an Olympic swimming event, got a feel for the water and the River Seine currents when he trained over the course on Wednesday.
Concerns over the quality of water have eased as good weather and no rain this week has curtailed run off water entering the river. The women’s race took place on Thursday morning with Dutch swimmer Sharon van Rouwendaal winning the gold medal.
