Kate O’Connor, Rhys McClenaghan and Daniel Wiffen are the leading medal contenders among the 65-strong Northern Ireland team taking part in the 2026 Commonwealth Games, which get under way in Glasgow on Thursday. All three have won medals of different colours before, and all three are chasing gold this time around.
Originally set for Victoria in Australia, escalating costs forced their withdrawal as hosts, with Glasgow agreeing to step in September in 2024, with a scaled-down games of only 10 sports, across seven venues, and no athletes’ village.
Northern Ireland has selected athletes in nine of those sports – with large boxing and swimming squads named, along with those in athletics, cycling, gymnastics, judo, lawn bowls, netball and weightlifting.
McClenaghan is the first of the medal hopes in action, the Olympic pommel horse champion going in the gymnastics qualifying round on Friday, with the final set for next Monday. The 27-year-old from Newtownards won gold on the Gold Coast in 2018, and silver in Birmingham in 2022, with Glasgow being his first championship since Paris.
Wiffen is among the 15-strong swimming team, the Olympic 800m champion entered in three freestyle events, starting with the 400m on Saturday, then 800m and 1,500m next week. He won silver in the 1,500m four years ago. Twin brother Nathan wasn’t selected.
Wiffen will likely come up against his good friend and rival Jack McMillan, who was part of Team GB’s relay team that claimed Olympic gold in Paris, and is entered the 100m, 200m and 400m freestyle.
Danielle Hill returns for her fourth games after making her Commonwealth debut as a 14-year-old in 2014. Conor Ferguson is back at the games after reaching two finals in 2018. The 26-year-old, who made his Olympic debut in Paris, missed 2022 in Birmingham but returns for the 50m backstroke in Glasgow.
Northern Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen competes for second place and to take the silver medal in the men’s 1,500m freestyle at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty
O’Connor will then take centre stage in the athletics events next week, her heptathlon taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Two weeks after that, she’s set to take on another heptathlon at the European Championships in Birmingham.
O’Connor hasn’t competed since winning her fifth championship medal within 13 months, with bronze in the pentathlon at the World Indoors in March. The goal of winning two more medals within just over a fortnight is exactly the sort of challenge the 25-year-old from Dundalk relishes.
“I’ve never put myself in a position where I’ve done two heptathlons so close together, but I’ve full faith I’ll be able to,” she says. “And we’ve tailored the training to replicate tough days, close together. Training has been going really well, but like I keep saying, it’s one thing doing it in training, it’s different trying to replicate that in competition, especially when you’re under pressure.”
O’Connor was 17 when she made her senior debut at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast. Four years ago in Birmingham, she won heptathlon silver behind England’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson.
She has a strong connection to the Commonwealth event: her mother Valerie was born and raised in Portglenone, just outside Ballymena, while O’Connor was born in Newry, the nearest hospital to the family home in Dundalk.
She will be joined in the heptathlon by Anna McCauley, who finished sixth in 2022, and more recently second in the UK Athletics Championship. Nick Griggs has been selected for his first Commonwealth Games and will compete in the 5,000m.
There is also a 12-strong boxing squad, with Michaela Walsh back for her fourth Games and trying to defend the featherweight title she won in Birmingham in 2022. A two-time Olympian, the 33-year-old also won silver in 2014 in Glasgow and in 2018 at the Gold Coast.
In track cycling, Erin Creighton is set to compete in the scratch, points and elimination races.