Tokyo 2020: Mona McSharry already eyeing up Parisian pool glory in 2024

It began at the Pier Head Hotel that squats on the boat quay in quaint Mullaghmore, Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Classiebawn Castle high above, overlooking the town.

Mona McSharry’s folk come from a few miles up the road in Grange but her swimming began there, moved counties to Ballyshannon in Donegal and is now in Tennessee.

But Mullaghmore and Classiebawn are apt as the last few days in Tokyo have become McSharry’s induction into swimming royalty. Paris in three years’ time with Irish swimming clutching its pearls, could be her coronation.

“Basically making it to the Olympics was this year’s target so I think being able to make it into a semi and a final in my first race at the Olympics is pretty nice,” she says.

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“The 2024 targets were to make it to the Olympics. So I might have to change those and make them a little bit harder on myself.

“You know it’s really exciting and in the next three years there will probably be young ones coming up again, like Lydia (Jacoby) has kind of just jumped on the scene and managed to win a gold which is amazing

“So I think my goal for the next three years is just to try to perfect my race strategy. I’m still trying to figure out what works for me. I’m still quite young so I think just training and seeing.”

The Tokyo experience has made McSharry hungry for more and as she stands in her streamlined swimsuit smiling and talking after an eighth place in the Olympic final still flush with the effort, Paris 2024 and the energy of her desire and ambition for greater Olympic success is blazing.

McSharry has captured something, her presence, her easy grace and a talent that has begun to blossom has an irrepressible energy of its own. All the teenage years she gave over for endless lengths of a pool while everyone else was sleeping through long Irish winters, Tokyo has given back in just a few days.

“I’ve been dreaming of it, especially with the extra year added on to this Olympic cycle,” she says. “I’ve been dreaming about it for so long and telling myself for so long that I’d make it… and to just be able to get here.

“All the early mornings, early nights…maybe not going out as much as my friends did in school. But it was all worth it. I get to train in America, go to college. I made friends all over the world. I get to compete at the Olympics, something only a handful of people in the world get to experience. It definitely is worth it.”

There are around 10 swimmers past and present in Tokyo from her US university with Irish teammate Ellen Walsh arriving as a freshman next year. Mullaghmore may have been where it started, Ballyshannon the midwife but Tennessee is a finishing school for Olympians.

This week, in her head she suggests that she has over achieved, or, at least performed better than she had imagined she would. She knows the split times better than anyone and in the final there was two seconds between her and the US Olympic champion, a 17-year-old still in high school, Lydia Jacoby. McSharry has got to find something like that number in a race that at Jacoby’s pace takes just a minute and five seconds.

That challenge more sets her mind into a default position of determination and stubborn drive. It’s not something to fear.

“I always loved the water,” she says. “I grew up beside the sea, my parents put me in to learn how to swim when I was five - I needed to, being in and out of the water. It grew from there.

“I started competing at Community Games, joined a club. Targets started getting bigger and bigger, I started achieving those, started shooting for higher targets, and I always enjoyed it.

“I am a little bit stubborn too, when I started I was like, I’m going to finish this one, I’m going to reach all my targets so that’s where I am now: constantly making targets that I’m going to fight to try and get to.”

Only the second Irish swimmer to make an Olympic final, she is in the foothills of competing for an Olympic podium place. But she’s alive to the goal. Barriers have fallen. Possibilities have replaced them.

“Yeah I’d love to beat eighth at my next Olympics I guess,” she says. “Try and beat my own little targets and just see what happens. It’s all about getting your hands on the wall first. It’s just a race and that’s why we do it. That’s why we love the sport.”