The men's 1500 metres freestyle kicked off the finals on day one of the Irish Open Swimming Championships at the Aurora Complex in Bangor, and as expected the event was convincingly won by Daniel Wiffen who retained his Irish title.
Wiffen, the Olympic bronze medallist in the event in Paris two years ago, won in a time of 14:51.38.
His twin brother Nathan was a distant second in the silver medal position, with Limerick-based Daragh Horgan taking bronze.
However, even though Wiffen cemented his place on the Irish team for the European Championship in Paris in August with his winning swim, the 25-year-old said after the race that he wasn’t particularly happy with the time.
He opined that it was the kind of return he was posting some four years ago.
"That time was pretty awful to be honest," said Wiffen
"I’ve got to take it because it's my first sub-15 (minutes) of the year, so I've got to take some positives from the race.
"I felt pretty good, but I'd say (at) about 800 to 900 mark, it just kind of faded away a bit.
"I should go back to work and start working on the back end of the racing because the 1500 I've noticed is starting to slip away from me a bit.
"I'm looking forward to the remainder of the week to see how fast we are in more of the sprints like the 800 and 400 freestyle."
Wiffen’s 1500m freestyle win was the second fastest time in the world this year, some six second off the 14:45.45 set by the Japanese swimmer Kaito Tabuchi.
"I mean if you want to take world number two as a win, can have that," he said.
"I call it first loser in my books, we're only looking for number one, but the 1500, it's either a hit or miss every time.
"The Olympics it was a miss (the 1500 final) for the bronze medal and the 800 freestyle was a win.
"We have to see what happens at the end of the week and then I'm sure after the 800, I'll be really happy."
Wiffen who still has the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle to come this week, said recently that he might leave his California training base and move to the high-performance Centre in Dublin if he did not record good times this week.
Grace Davidson won the senior women's 100m freestyle gold medal, holding off fellow Olympians Danielle Hill and Victoria Catterson with a winning time of 54.88 seconds.
In the morning heats, Davidson swam the fastest qualifying time of 54.45, which broke her own Irish record of 54.80 seconds, set when she won bronze at the European Junior Championships in Slovakia last year.
Davidson has also now qualified for August's senior European Aquatics meet in Paris while Evan Bailey won the men’s 100 freestyle title and secured a qualification time for those continental championships in a winning time of 48.94 seconds.
Jack Cassin of the High-Performance Centre in Limerick won the men’s 200m butterfly title (1:57.05), which was half a second off Brendan Hyland's seven-year-old Irish record but good enough to qualify for the Europeans.
The final race of the opening day was the women’s 200 fly and Olympic finalist Ellen Walshe led the qualifiers before winning gold in the final in 2:09.74 which also ensured her qualification for the Paris Europeans this summer.
