Two gold and a silver for Ellen at Europeans

ELLEN Walshe closed out her competition by finishing fourth in the final of the Women’s 50m Butterfly with a new personal best time of 26.64, narrowly missing a bronze medal by just 0.38 of a second at the LEN U23 European Swimming Championships.

The Templeogue swimmer is coming out of these championships with two golds and a silver, an amazing feat considering she has only returned from the World Aquatics Championships in Japan.

A competition where she achieved the qualification standard in the 200m Individual Medley for the Olympic Games in Paris next year.

Reflecting on the competition, Walshe said, “Yeah, it’s been a great meet.

It’s so nice to have the home crowd here and to finish fourth in the 50m in a race I didn’t even think I’d get back into the final for, like I’m delighted.

“I’m delighted to get my Paris QT time out of the way and now I get a whole year to train, and it was nice to finish on a little fun meet, as me and Mona said, and it was just get up and see what we had left in the tank.

Ellen Walshe proudly shows off her medals

“So yeah, I’m delighted to finish fourth in the 50m tonight.

And it obviously would’ve been nice to hop onto the podium, but it wasn’t there tonight.

It’s savage (the support).

Like I can’t thank everybody enough for coming out.

Like we’ve never had anything like it.

I want to say thanks to everyone that came out and supported me.”

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