Wiffen has enjoyed a phenomenal year, appearing at his first Olympics in Tokyo last summer before breaking the 15mins mark in the 1500m at the FINA World Championships in Budapest – the first Irish swimmer to do so.
Now, with the Commonwealth Games due to commence, the 20-year-old has his sights on more records and even a podium place at major championships:
“From Tokyo to now, I've made massive jumps. I've made my first world final – short course and long course – and then obviously the Commonwealth Games, and we're going to build on from that too.
“I just like to keep on progressing and hopefully onwards towards a medal at the Olympics in 2024.”
Wiffen, who trains under the guidance of experienced coach Andi Manley, explained to º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Sport the importance of working alongside such a strong training group at the Pool of Dreams on campus.
“The training group that we have is really helping a lot,” he said.
“We’ve got world champions and that's given me a lot of confidence going into the Commonwealth Games…I'm still going to be nervous but I'm just going to hopefully smash it.
“I'd like to be the first Irish male to medal in the Commonwealths, I don't think it's ever happened before, so that's my goal.”
Andi Manley added:“He was already a world junior level athlete, and he'd represented Ireland at a few competitions before, but since he's come in, he's taken nearly 50 seconds off his 1,500 time in the last two years.
“Clearly there's been some good work done with him as a younger swimmer…he's very hungry, he knows what he wants to achieve and he works extremely hard day in, day out.
“It's a combination of everything and having that environment and that high performance culture, I guess that just feeds through the team and that's getting him the success.”
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