For five months after winning an Olympic bronze medal in Paris, Mona McSharry didn’t dip her toe into a swimming pool. Such was her love-hate relationship with swimming over the previous four years she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get back in.
In reaching the podium in Paris – her bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke was just .01 of a second ahead of two joint fourth-place finishers – McSharry fulfilled a childhood dream. Growing up in the small Sligo village of Grange, near the ocean at Mullaghmore, she started competitive swimming at age seven, and after Paris felt like it was time to explore other things in life.
So McSharry rented a camper van with a college friend, and they drove the length and breadth of the US western states. Eating and drinking and whatever else she fancied too, and definitely not thinking about the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“It was five months off swimming in total, maybe three and a half, four months of travel,” she says. “I felt a little guilty at the start, so I was doing a bit of running, and some surfing. But the further I went into the trip, the more I was like ‘no, this is my time to just relax’.
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“And it was amazing, just the reset I needed.”
By the end of December 2024, she was back in college at the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville, her home for the four years before Paris. There, without any pressure or expectation, she got back into the swimming pool – then slowly started thinking about the possibilities of going again for LA.
“I’d always thought coming into 2024, that would be it. I didn’t think I had another four-year Olympic block in me. I didn’t plan to be swimming longer than that, just thought I’d be done naturally.
“Then college offered me another year of scholarship, to race with them. Then I loved the training block from April 2025, into the World Championships [in Singapore in July], there were no part of me that didn’t enjoy that.
“Then I thought I’d do one more year, have been really enjoying it so far, especially the training aspect. And that’s what you have to do, leading up to the Olympics. So I kind of came to the decision, in January, February of this year, that 2028 might be on the books.
“I’m still leaving it [LA] open. If I turn around tomorrow and want to be done, I’m going to let myself do that. I don’t want to push through if I’m not enjoying it. But I do see myself racing in 2028. Especially the way I’m feeling now about training.”
If the complete break did her good mentally, it didn’t do her any harm physically either: “Honestly, I was shocked how quickly I came back. I started back on the December 31st, and raced in February. I’d say I got back to 90 per cent within two months.”
McSharry is back in Grange this week, ahead of next week’s Irish Open Swimming Championships in Bangor, where she hopes to seal her selection for the European Championships in Paris in August, in both the 100m and 200m breaststroke.
At 25, she still has plenty of time of her side to make LA, but she’s not putting any pressure on herself. There was a low point before Paris, at the 2022 European Championships in Rome, when a year after making the Olympic final in Tokyo, she was secretly praying she wouldn’t make another final, and with that face the unbearable tension and expectation that would come with it.
“In 2022 I came to the realisation that maybe I didn’t love swimming as much as I used to. And I thought, after 2024, I would be ready to move on. But I have gone back to more of a love of it. Just the day-in, day-out discipline, it becomes such a routine at this point, it’s not as mentally hard as it used to be. It’s just the life that I live now.”
She competed at several World Cup meetings from September to December, getting right back to her competitive best, earning five podium positions throughout the series.
There is another commitment on this trip home, with McSharry receiving the freedom of Sligo the week after the Irish Open, and whether or not she makes LA, she’s already enjoying the next journey.
“I made the commitment to myself, at 12, 13 years old, that I was going to race in Paris in 2024, and try to podium. Making it through that planned part of my career, now being on the other side of it, feels liberating. I still love swimming, love being an athlete. But I do think you have to experience the rollercoaster, because that’s sport. And experiencing that has given me a lot more wisdom.
“I am as dedicated and committed to swimming fast, always shooting to do better. But there’s less stress or pressure. I just feel so light, that’s the only way I can describe it. And I’m trying to channel that as long as I can.”
