Hyland and Coyne set for final crack at Tokyo qualification
By Daire Walsh
LOCAL swimmers Brendan Hyland and Niamh Coyne will have a final opportunity to secure a spot at the Olympic Games in Tokyo when they compete at the 2021 Swim Ireland Performance Meet from June 24-26.
Set to take place at the Sport Ireland National Aquatic Centre in Blanchardstown, this event will focus on 10 athletes who came within 1.5% of a FINA ‘A’ time during the month of April with Knocklyon’s Hyland and Tallaght native Coyne included amongst this select group.
Niamh Coyne will have a final opportunity to qualify for Tokyo
Additionally, the times posted over the course of this three-day event will also be considered as part of a selection process for the 2021 LEN European Championships (25m) in November as well as the 2021 FINA World Championships (25m) that will be held during the following month.
Speaking in relation to this Performance Meet, Swim Ireland National Performance Director Jon Rudd said "When the 2021 Olympic Nomination Policy was revised as part of the ongoing COVID-19 circumstances, we foresaw at that time that athletes within the 1.5% of an Olympic qualification standard would travel into Europe to find a meet of their choosing during June as their final attempt at Tokyo qualification.
“With things as they currently are, we concluded that it was much safer in all regards for such athletes to make this attempt on home soil, avoiding international travel, whilst providing an additional qualification opportunity for those wishing to race in the international short course season at the end of this year.”
Hyland will enter this meet in high spirits following his impressive performances at the LEN European Aquatics Championships in Budapest at the end of last month.
He was part of the Men’s 4x100m Medley Relay team that set a new national record for this event, surpassing the previous best time of 3:35.23 when they clocked in at 3:34.62.
This quartet subsequently finished seventh in the 4x100m final, but hope remains that Ireland could yet have a swimming relay team at the Summer Olympics for the first time since 1972.
Hyland will be hoping to go to Tokyo
As a member of the National Centre Dublin, Hyland has a strong familiarity with the pool in Blanchardstown and will aim to use this to his advantage.
The same could be said of Coyne, who also swims out of the capital’s National Centre. She competed in the Women’s 50m Breaststroke at the European Championships, clocking a time of 31.99 to finish fourth in her heat race.
This was Coyne’s fastest time in this event for more than two years and was even more impressive when you consider it was her first international appearance for Ireland in all of 15 months.
In the 100m Breaststroke event at the Irish National Team Trials in April, she posted a time of 1:07.58.
This saw her agonisingly miss the FINA ‘A’ time required for Olympic consideration by just 0.51 seconds, but she will have a chance to go a step further at the forthcoming Performance Meet.
