OLYMPIC COUNTDOWN: GRÁINNE MURPHYShe belongs among the elite of swimmers, but you won't hear Gráinne Murphy shouting that from the rooftops, writes JOHNNY WATTERSON
HER MATTER-of- factness distances her from the people asking the questions. She is sitting no more than two feet away but there is a separation. Gráinne Murphy has perfected a remoteness of intentions, aspirations and goals. A life of sunrise training sessions in the pool and a daily regime that in some quarters could be regarded as anti-social behaviour has her mind trained to hang tough as much as her body.
There is barely a flicker when she repeats the swimmer’s gospel of seeing no further than the next swim. It’s like an aquatic Gregorian chant, repeated and learned and lived and hammered home second after second, hour after hour and day after day, clocking up metres and kilometres in the Olympic-sized pool in the University of Limerick.
Murphy’s life has made her what she is, or, rather, she has made her life what it is. But there is a razor’s edge to the 19-year-old, who gets up at 4.30am and goes to bed at 9pm. There is the natural shyness of the teenager and a wariness of the attention that she has been receiving as London approaches. But there is also a tunnel vision aimed towards toppling records, climbing podiums. This is not always fun. The strong message is that a cold pact with swimming has been made in her mind and right now there are no alternatives.
For the last six years it has never been about fumbling forward or wondering where the path will take her. Offering herself to swimming is no halfway house for Murphy, who has entirely signed her carcass over to the science of moving faster through the water. So far it is paying off.
Her coach Ronald Claes, a former Belgian international swimmer, has trained her from the age of 14. Murphy is very much a product of the Claes school since moving from Wexford to train and school full time in Castletroy in Limerick.
Her obedience to that hinge decision in her life and the demands of the mindset to follow through without any apparent doubt is witheringly intimidating. Little light gets in to blind Murphy’s tunnel vision.
Did you set goals? “Training has been going very well. I set out goals at the start of the year. First of my goals is that I go to the Games and swim to the best of my ability.”
What would be success for you at the Games? “The goal now before me is swimming as well as I can in the event.”
Would a personal best be a success? “No one can predict what you are going to do on the day so I will make sure I will train to the best of my ability up to the Games and see what happens on the day.”
What’s the plan? “London on 25th.”
Excited? “Yeah I am. I’m really looking forward to being in the London atmosphere and it’s my first Olympics. It is so close to home and that is a little bit of an advantage. We don’t have to acclimatise and time zones and everything. Hopefully we can use it to out advantage.”
No problem focusing? “No – we’ve all got our own routines.”
As a successful junior swimmer did you always plan for London 2012? “Well I don’t really like to look too far ahead into the future so I’ve taken it day by day.”
So what do we know about Gráinne Murphy? Originally from Ballinaboola in Wexford, she grew up a short distance from the swimming pool in New Ross.
Her older sister swam and Murphy tagged along to the early training sessions before they went to school. She did gymnastics and Irish dancing but water grabbed her attention.
Her first high of touching the wall first came in the Community Games and at schools’ galas. But there was barely room to breathe between knowing she was good in the pool and having to make a career-defining decision to kick on. That moment came at 13 when she was invited to join the High Performance Centre in the University of Limerick.
She was asked to change her home, her friends, her school. She was asked to make a commitment to swimming and the suggestion was she spent weekends in Limerick and train in Wexford during the week. But compromise wasn’t part of her thinking. In truth she binned the usual Irish solutions – I’ll do half the training here and half there and I’ll see the boyfriend at weekends and I’ll also get my Leaving Cert and I’ll see the mammy every two weeks . . .
With her mother she upped sticks and moved. Ballinaboola to Limerick. Chasing the dream is always hardship and cutting off one part to make another stronger is always a long-odds gamble. In 2009, when Murphy was 16, she won three gold medals and one bronze at the European Junior Championships. The following year she won a silver medal at the European Senior Championships and last December qualified for London 2012 in the 800m freestyle.
“I get up at 25 to five and have my breakfast,” she says. “At the pool for five. Jump in at half-five and swim until eight or half-eight till we’re done. Then back in the gym from two till three and then swimming from three to five or half-five.”
Bed time? “Eight or half eight . . . anything on TV after nine I’ve never heard of it. It’s just my life. I suppose you get used to it. It’s what I want to do so I enjoy doing it. I wouldn’t call it a sacrifice. It’s a hobby so you are going to do whatever you want to do.”
In April she contracted a virus that took four weeks to shake. In Olympic year that’s a lifetime and it may explain her defaulting to the Gregorian chant. It might explain why few are talking about finals and medals.
But Murphy is young and there is an understanding that she should be in London and belongs among the top swimmers, the 800m Beijing bronze medallist Lotte Friis and Olympic champion Jessica Adlington. In March she travelled over to Denmark and trained with Friis. She swam in their championships and bettered her 800m time as well as setting a PB for her 400m freestyle.
She’ll fly to London on the 25th and race on the 29th. Her time this year for the 800m freestyle is 8:29.55 minutes . Adlington’s best is 8:18.54 , while Kate Ledecky swam 8:19.78 seconds in the US Olympic trials last month, which puts her second in the world to the British swimmer.
Friis’s best time is 8:22.10, which puts her at fourth place in the world rankings. Murphy’s mark is 10 seconds behind the top-end competitors and in 22nd place on the ranking table.
“It’ll be very, very tough to make the final,” she says.
You wait for more and nothing arrives. Maybe it won’t, maybe not this year. Then again, Murphy would probably be the last to tell you.
POOL OF TALENT THE REST OF THE TEAM
BARRY MURPHY
100m Breaststroke
From Drumcondra, Dublin, Barry graduated from the University of Tennessee with a business degree in 2010. He was the first of the Irish team to achieve the Olympic 'A' standard last year in Indianapolis and has competed for Ireland at world and European levels. He has been swimming competitively for 15 years and is currently preparing in Spain with coach Mike Bottom.
SYCERIKA McMAHON
100m Breaststroke
The teenager from Portaferry, Co Down, is considered a great prospect. The 17-year-old won silver on the final day of competition at the European Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, this year. She completed the 50m breaststroke final in a time of 31.27 seconds – missing out on gold by two-hundredths of a second.
MELANIE NOCHER
200m Backstroke
Swimming in her second Olympics at London 2012, the 27-year-old is in her final year of a sports science degree at Loughborough University in England. From Holywood, Co Down, Nocher dipped under the qualifying 'A' time in the 200m backstroke European final in Hungary and finished fifth overall, setting a new Irish senior record of 2:10.75.
