While delighted to reach tonight’s final of the S5/SB4/SM5 200m freestyle, Meath’s James Scully believes there is room for improvement.
Scully finished third in his heat in a season’s-best time of 2:53.17, to finish sixth overall out of the two heats, but says focus is the key to bettering his time.
“I’m pretty happy. It’s the fastest heat swim of my career and my second fastest time of all time, about 0.15 off my personal best,” Scully said.
“Competition compared to London has stepped up ten-fold so it’s really good to be able to secure my place in the final now and I think there’s more in the tank so we’re definitely looking to go faster than that in the final.”
The man from Ratoath starts in lane 6 in tonight’s final of eight, which is scheduled for 11.59pm, and Scully is determined to do better.
He continued: “I’m aiming to get around the 2:50:00 mark, or try and even dip under, but going into the race I’m more looking at the process rather than the outcome, so I’m really trying to focus on that race.
“One thing I can take away is that I probably lost a little bit of focus after about 120 metres. The head kind of went out before it came back in again, so in the final tonight I’m really going to look to nail that focus 100% of the way through the race.”
Scully’s heat was won by USA's Roy Perkins in a time of 2:39.69, with Andrew Mullen of Great Britain second in 2:43.20.
