When John Shortt was welcomed back to Galway Corinthians Rugby Club on Monday night, wearing his two gold medals and the bronze won at the World Junior Swimming Championships, it was a double homecoming of sorts.
It provided the space for Shortt to greet his family and friends, as well as some former teammates. Rugby was, after all, his first sporting love.
Shortt excelled in all three backstroke events at last week’s championships in Otopeni on the outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest. The 18-year-old from Oranmore, just east of Galway city, is one of the most promising swimmers in the world. He is also proof of the value of playing multiple sports as a youngster.
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“I was very big into rugby, loved rugby,” he says. “As a kid, you try everything. Your parents throw you into anything, just to get you out of the house. I was into football, a small bit of hurling, all different sports.
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“But rugby was the main one for a while. I think rugby taught me a lot and the biggest thing was the leadership side of sport. I take that into swimming. That sounds weird because it’s a solo sport, but we train as a team all the time and are around each other so much. [I am] just trying to be a positive influence over the team.
“I want them all to improve, just as much as I want to improve. So the biggest thing is to make sure whenever we’re in those dark moments in training, when we’re being absolutely killed, we can rely on each other to keep ourselves going . . . and that’s what rugby really taught me.”
After his gold medal heroics in the 100m and 200m backstroke, and bronze in the 50m backstroke, Shortt is only now taking the time to also reflect on his Leaving Cert results. The exam results were announced last Friday while he was preparing for his 50m backstroke final.
It is two years since Shortt made the big decision to move away from home and join the Swim Ireland High Performance squad, based at the University of Limerick (UL). That move also led to him transferring to Castletroy College to start his Leaving Cert cycle. By then, he had decided to dedicate his sporting ambitions to swimming.
“Probably under-16, when I was getting a good bit better (at swimming), going down to Limerick more often to do training with the squad. That’s when we just said this was a bit too risky to be doing this (rugby) and the swimming.”
No regrets on that front, then. Shortt has decided to remain in Limerick, despite several offers to attend US universities. He secured enough points in his Leaving Cert to study sports science at UL.
“The main pull to UL was firstly my coach (John Szaranek) and secondly, my teammates and my friends. And obviously UL, the college, is fantastic as well. Right now, Limerick is the place where I want to be.”
Ideally, if things keep progressing, he will join Daniel Wiffen as Ireland’s big medal hope in the pool at the LA Olympics in 2028.
“Daniel has already been texting me,” says Shortt. “It’s always nice to have an Olympic champion call you a beast, so I can’t complain.”
