The mighty Quinn – Castlebar swimmer off to Rio

Daniel Carey

CASTLEBAR swimmer Nicholas  Quinn booked his ticket to Rio in spectacular fashion on Sunday night – and the town looks set to be beset by Olympic fever.
The 22-year-old swam 2:11.24 in the 200 metres breaststroke, almost half a second under the qualification time of 2:11.66. A psychology student at the University of Edinburgh, he has deferred his final year in order to train full-time in an effort to make his Olympic dream a reality … and that dream has now come true.
“It’s just fantastic,” Castlebar Swimming Club PRO Darina Molloy told The Mayo News. “A lot of the younger swimmers would have watched the last Olympics, and the television coverage was just spectacular. You can see the swimmers from every angle [including] from under the water. You nearly feel that you’re in the water with them!
“So the fact that they get to sit now and see Nicholas is just unbelievable.”
The young man from Castlebar’s Turlough Road had progressed to Sunday’s final in 2:13.27, just off his personal best of 2:13.04, but smashed that time in the final to claim gold … and a ticket to Rio.
Marian English, who coached Nicholas at Castlebar, spoke to him by telephone shortly after his great success, after calling his current (Edinburgh-based) coach Chris Jones to congratulate him. She spoke with evident pride about the dedication shown by the swimmer himself and his parents. Quinn’s father John and mother Mary were also in Eindhoven on a night to remember.
“It’ll be very exciting,” added Darina Molloy. “Nicholas has been extremely dedicated. The unsocial hours [involved meant that] he didn’t have what anyone would call a normal college life. But he didn’t moan about that or make a big deal about it. He accepted that he had chosen swimming, and he said [in a 2015 interview] that he didn’t know what he’d do without it. So it’s just great that all that work has paid off.”