Last October, Brian Sweeney spoke on The Coaches Lane podcast about his work with Ellen Walshe. Sweeney is head coach of Templeogue Swim Club, home for Ireland’s double European champion since she started lessons there as a four-year-old.
Sweeney has coached Walshe for most of her life and recalled the build-up to the Paris Olympics. “I have a thing on the wall, a countdown clock for Paris 2024 and there’s a phrase underneath that says, ‘how well did you coach today?’,” he said.
“Very occasionally, we’d be in the pool and I might have lost track of the session and Ellen would look at me and go, ‘Do you want to read that thing on the back of your door?’. It’s just keeping you honest, that I’ve got my job to do to stay a step ahead.”
That sort of intense focus is essential for athletes engaged in elite sport, but those who know Walshe also know the more playful side of the 24-year-old who sang and danced in the call room with her Ireland relay team-mates at the Olympic Aquatic Centre on Sunday night; who enjoyed late-night chats over tea and biscuits with roommate Mona McSharry last week; who loves her two dogs, loves teaching swimming to children and also teaches yoga.
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After her two European gold medals and three Irish records last week, Walshe will, from today, join McSharry and Danielle Hill for seven country-wide Swim Ireland clinics involving 300 children. They will pass on what they have learned to the youngsters.
Walshe also works with the Olympic Federation’s Dare To Believe programme, visiting schools to inspire the next generation. Community is central to her story. She has never really left the Templeogue pool Sweeney calls “our little bath”, a community operation of about 120 members.
Walshe started training seriously at seven. Two years later, she completed a charity butterfly challenge, swimming 500 metres of double-armed butterfly from start to finish. Her technical ability was obvious, as was her determination to succeed.
A major feature of her success in the 200m and 400m individual medley (IM) finals last week was her underwater acceleration off the final turn. From an early age, Sweeney developed the distance, range, depth and width of her kicks before adding speed and rotation.
Their relationship evolved too, with Sweeney becoming less corrective and more inclined to guide as they went through “eureka moments” over time.
Walshe entered the Irish underage programme, raced at British age-group championships and, aged 13, won 100m butterfly silver at the European Youth Olympic Festival.
She attended Our Lady’s School on Templeogue Road, five minutes from home and the pool, and played hockey and basketball until fifth year, when she committed fully to swimming. In 2020, her Leaving Cert year, she was doing nine pool sessions and three gym sessions a week.
When Covid struck, she was able to continue training as an elite athlete. She had a key to the Templeogue pool and thrived with that narrowed focus.
The delayed Tokyo Olympics gave her extra time to qualify, which she did only weeks before the Games. Her debut was a roller-coaster but she banked the experience and, later that year, won 400m IM silver at the World Short Course Championships in Abu Dhabi, becoming the first Irish female swimmer to win a medal at that level.
Between both competitions, Walshe moved to the University of Tennessee, linking up with McSharry. She made a big splash, winning four SEC gold medals and was named SEC Female Freshman of the Year while earning seven All-America certificates.
She returned home after suffering from illness and her senior career accelerated in 2023. She won European Short Course 400m IM bronze and later took two golds and a silver at the European Under-23 Championships, then qualified for the World Championship Short Course final in the 100m butterfly the following year, finishing sixth.
She broke eight Irish records in that meet and 15 overall across long and short course swimming between September 2024 and October 2025, also winning her first senior European Short Course title in that period in the 200m butterfly, becoming the first Irish woman to win gold in the event, while also adding 400m IM silver.
A successful return to the States with McSharry, just weeks after reaching two World Championship finals, boosted her confidence.
Yet while she struck for 200m butterfly gold at the European Short Course Championships two months later, finishing in seventh place in the 400m IM was the result that stayed with her. In an interview she gave before last week’s success, Walshe described competitive racing as “the biggest mental game you’ll play”.
At the Olympic Aquatic Centre, she showed how far that mindset had developed, winning the 400m and 200m IM and setting an Irish record in the 200m butterfly despite finishing fourth. She had believed she could medal, but never dreamed of two golds.
With two years until the Los Angeles Olympics, expectations have risen that Walshe can follow McSharry and Daniel Wiffen onto the Olympic podium.
American and Australian swimming remains stacked with world-class talent, while the world-record times held by Canada’s Summer McIntosh in the 200m butterfly and both individual medleys are much faster than Walshe’s personal bests.
But continuous improvement has always been her strength. With the focus that has carried her to double European gold, she will keep chasing the gap.
