{"id":417162,"date":"2026-04-02T19:37:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T19:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/417162\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T19:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T19:37:31","slug":"if-i-dont-swim-fast-next-week-im-not-staying-in-california-daniel-wiffen-makes-bold-claim-ahead-of-irish-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/417162\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If I don\u2019t swim fast next week, I\u2019m not staying in California\u2019 \u2013 Daniel Wiffen makes bold claim ahead of Irish Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

After surgery and recovery, Wiffen, who won gold in the men\u2019s 800m freestyle in Paris 2024, made the decision to move his training base from Loughborough University to Berkeley, California, alongside his brother Nathan.<\/p>\n

Ahead of next week\u2019s Irish Open Swimming Championships, which take place in Bangor from April 8-12, Wiffen says he will consider moving his training base back to Dublin if he doesn\u2019t produce the times he expects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be very honest with everybody: if I don\u2019t swim fast next week, I\u2019m not staying in California,\u201d he said. The Armagh native\u2019s goals are to swim 400m around 4:33, the 800m below 7:42 and the 1,500m under 14:40. Hitting those times will dictate his next steps on the road to LA 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I\u2019m going to be fast, but who knows how fast. I\u2019m thinking of coming back to Dublin if things don\u2019t go well. If I swim the lights out in Bangor, then my decision is made, but I\u2019m expecting to be the fastest ever so I don\u2019t have to make that decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the main reasons I left Loughborough was because I wasn\u2019t convinced that I could stay there and still go fast, and I wasn\u2019t convinced that the training, with what they were doing and the way the programme was moving, that I could perform to the best of my ability, so that\u2019s why I went to California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiffen says his hangover from surgery was short-lived and that he has no issues or doubts: \u201cWhen I came off my surgery, it took me two months to win a European Championship, so obviously it\u2019s not that hard. I was posting some fast times in America, and I also had some slow races. In terms of the doubt after surgery, it went away after the Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Daniel Wiffen celebrates after winning the men’s 1500m freestyle final during the European Short Course swimming championships at Lublin in Poland. Photo: Nikola Krstic\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n

After the success of Ellen Walshe and John Shortt at the European Short-Course Championships in Poland in December, Irish swimming is on a high, and Wiffen hopes that can translate into the long-course events, ahead of this year\u2019s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely coming into the fastest we\u2019ve ever been. I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ve ever had that many people on the podium at European short course. I\u2019m not really a short-course person, even though I broke the world record in December, but short course is not swimming to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about the Olympics and World Championships, long course, so we\u2019ll see how we do. I think it will be the biggest test for Irish swimming to see if we can convert the success into more long-course medals. If we come back from the European Championships in 2027 with the same medal haul as Poland, I\u2019ll be the happiest person in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we have a team that all succeed together, it makes life so much easier. It becomes like this infectious energy as soon as the first person does it. Normally, it\u2019s me on the first day as well, racing 400m, so I like to kick it off. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to bring into the long-course season, driving each other on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Daniel Wiffen sees Irish swimming on the rise internationally<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old says there is a big difference between training in the UK and California, both in and out of the pool. \u201cLoughborough was all about the grind, very similar weather to Ireland,\u201d he explains. \u201cI love swimming in the rain, because when I\u2019m in the rain and the weather\u2019s dull, you just want to get in the pool, but when I\u2019m in the sun, the motivation becomes a lot harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, when I\u2019m swimming in California, I\u2019d say the motivation is because I\u2019m there with a very fast training group, and everybody\u2019s pushing each other, whereas in Loughborough, I felt like it was more self-motivation, where I was more getting in there because I wanted to win. I wanted to do all these things where I feel like now the group is pushing each other, but I want a bit of the self-motivation back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have to see how the next week goes, but I\u2019ll happily answer questions about my future after I swim next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After surgery and recovery, Wiffen, who won gold in the men\u2019s 800m freestyle in Paris 2024, made the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[115942,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-417162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-daniel-wiffen","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116336803705296706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}