The thing that struck you most listening to Róisín Ní Ríain after her first final of the Paris Games – a fourth place finish in the 100m butterfly – was her composure.
The Limerick woman is in the habit of winning. Her major championship debut at the 2021 Europeans was marked with a podium place, and the needle has been pointing only one way since.
She alone accounted for nearly half of Ireland's 12 medals at the European Championships earlier this year and having thrown her lot in four events for the Games, she represented one of Team Ireland’s biggest medal hopes.
So when she finished just outside the podium places, the suspicion among the Irish media scrum huddled in the bowels of La Defense Arena was that the 19-year-old would be bitterly disappointed, similar to Nicole Turner earlier that evening after her sixth-place finish in her 50m freestyle final.
Yet she strode over with a purpose, a smile on her face, speaking freely about her performance and the foundations it would give her for the remainder of her races.
But was she not a little upset to find herself outside the medals?
"It’s my first event of every championship, it’s just an enjoyable one for me," she insisted. "I get to go out and have a first swim and hopefully I’ll build on that for the rest of the week."
There was a steely determination and you walked away confident she could deliver less than 24 hours later.
The backstroke is her preferred event and while the imperious Gia Pergolini yet again demonstrated her strength in the discipline, Ní Ríain looked at her ease as she ripped through the water to hold off the challenge of Italy’s Carlo Gilli, who took gold in the butterfly final yesterday.
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The science undergraduate kept her day as normal as possible, chit-chatting to her three sisters on the phone. Her fellow swimmers were keen to lend an ear, but for the most part it was about them.
"It helps to take your mind off racing," she says. "You definitely don't need to always be thinking about swimming."
The level-headed approach is the only way she knows, and the opening night has paved her path. One medal is in the bag, who knows if her luggage will be a little heavier when departing the French capital.
"Coming into this I knew that I had a couple of events," she says.
"I knew I had last night into today, I had only a final today so I didn’t have to wake up early. I slept in, but I think getting over a race - good or bad - and then moving onto the next race is just as important.
"You need to not get too wrapped up in it all until the end and then you can have your time to have a bit of fun and celebrate."
And celebrate she might, with Ireland’s first medal of Paris 2024 to bring Ireland’s tally to 231 since the inaugural Games of 1960.
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