Twenty-nineteen was when Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen made the decision to move and train at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom with the hopes of advancing his swimming career as a distance swimmer. It was in the initial lead-up to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo when Wiffen started training with Loughborough coach Andi Manley. As a 17-year-old in 2019, he was ranked outside the top 100 in Europe in both the 800m and 1500m freestyle events, with his 800m best time sitting at 8:13 and his 1500m at 15:39.

The long-term goal was to qualify for the 2024 Olympics, with the short-term goal being to improve freestyle technique to be able to train at that high level. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were initially on the back burner, but the delayed Games gave him another chance to reach the biggest stage.

“One of the first things (Andi Manley) said to me (that first year) was, ‘Dan, I think you have a shot at the Olympics but would you rather improve your technique and maybe not make the Olympics, or we train you as hard as possible and just make the Olympics and maybe you won’t go any further,’” Wiffen told World Aquatics. “I chose technique and we will make the Olympics. The first year was all about technique and we made the Olympics which was our plan.

“The next year, we started doing altitude camps so we started increasing the volume and this year we are doing the same thing with more altitude camps and making the volume even higher, and making our capacity better. He has changed there because I think he was technique focused before but in my second year he was more about the hard work and now he is mixing them together.”

Within two years of moving to Loughborough, Wiffen had taken the Irish national records down to 7:51 and 15:07 in the distance races in 2021, placing 14th and 20th respectively in his Olympic debut at age 19.

Wiffen, who trained alongside two-time Austrian Olympian Felix Auboeck in the lead-up to the Olympics, was just getting started. He used Auboeck as a target to chase to see how far he still needed to go to get to the level of winning medals at big meets. Auboeck was the World short course champion in 2021 in the 400m freestyle and made the final at both the Tokyo Olympics and Budapest World Championships in the event. Eventually, the gap between them got smaller, and Wiffen found himself among the big boys to make the World final in 2022.

Budapest Breakthrough

At the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Wiffen became the first male swimmer from Ireland to make a Worlds final, placing eighth in the 800m freestyle after another national record of 7:46 in the heats.

“The 800 was hard for me to do the double,” Wiffen said of racing in his first Worlds final. “I knew that to make the final I’d have to go a best time in the heats so I really went for it in the heats and making the final was just a bonus - an extra swim. In the final, I was a little bit slower but it was a good experience because now I know what it is like to swim a double going into this World Champs.”

In the 1500m, he scored another national record with a 14:57 in the heats, but just missed the final to place ninth overall.

The 1500m freestyle saw Gregorio Paltrinieri thrash the field with a torrent pace, getting as far as two and a half seconds under Sun Yang's world record pace from 2012. The Hungarian people knew a great swim when they saw one, and were cheering on Paltrinieri as if he was one of their own. Ultimately, Paltrinieri swam a 14:32.80 to fall short of Sun’s 14:31.02, and it was a memorable experience for those in the venue, including Wiffen, who was watching the race in the stands.

“My goal was to make the final and I did it in the 800 so I actually wasn’t that annoyed by (missing the 1500m final). I also really enjoyed watching (the 1500m final) live. I would have loved to be in that race, but I doubt I would have had any change in the medals because I was just trying to get the experience at World Champs. Watching it was pretty amazing. I remember everybody got up after 500 meters, and I thought this is why the 1500 is going to be the most watched race at this World Champs because I feel like the world record will go to win.”

World Record Under Threat

Leading into these World Championships, Wiffen all of a sudden finds himself amongst the talks for not only the 1500m and 800m gold medals, but the 1500m world record. At the Stockholm Open, he swam 14:34 in the 1500m to put himself second globally for 2023, while his 800m of 7:44 puts him eighth.

The 800m world record of 7:32 is a bit of a far reach at the moment, but the 1500m World Record has been under serious threat for the last three years.

Paltrinieri first put it on notice at a spectator-less race in Rome in August 2020 when he swam 14:33 in the middle of the COVID pandemic. At last year’s Worlds, Paltrinieri was under world record pace for 1450 meters before he was caught by Sun's virtual closing speed. A few weeks later at the European Championships, Mykhailo Romanchuk was under world record pace for 1400 meters before falling off to score his best time at 14:36.

Earlier this year, not long after Wiffen swam 14:34, 10K Olympic champion Florian Wellbrock swam his lifetime best at 14:34.89, just 0.02 ahead of Wiffen.

Amongst the seven fastest performers in the history of the men’s 1500m freestyle, five of them are still active and capable of winning the gold medal in Fukuoka. That leaves the world record vulnerable once again.

“I think that 14:31 needs to go and I would love to see it go,” Wiffen said of Sun’s world record that was set at the 2012 Olympics. “I was in the race when Florian went 14:07 short course in Abu Dhabi and that was pretty cool to be in that race. This time, I’d like to get the world record in a race.”

The apprentice becomes the master

Wiffen’s rise to the top of the world has been rapid, but it hasn’t been by accident. Even with only one World Championships finals swim under his belt in 2022, he is preparing himself for a full week of racing in Fukuoka 2023 - where he is expected to race the 400m, 800m, and 1500m freestyle and be a medal favourite in each. This rapid ascent was a part of his plan to be at his best for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, and if all goes to plan, he can get some valuable racing experience on a big program at the World Championships a year out.

“I’m doing a lot of races where I’m doing the 4/8/15 but they are back to back to back,” Wiffen said. “There is a day where I do the 400 heat + final and the next day the 800 in the finals session and then the 1500. I’m doing a lot of races and I’ve done that about five times so far this year. I’m just trying to do as many as possible because I want my last swim of the meet to still be really good.

“In training, we are doing a lot of double hard sets in the day and we are going to do a simulation where we do a 1500 heat and then the next evening after, doing a 1500 final in practice just to try to get my head around it. I don’t think it will be too much. I do train quite a bit and I can definitely trust my fitness and I believe I can do it.”

Wiffen has been an avid student of the sport - taking the time to study his competitors to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. Admittedly, he says if you want to be good at your event, you must know who your opponents are, and from afar he’s been studying the likes of Olympic champions Gregorio Paltrinieri, Bobby Finke and Florian Wellbrock. After watching them race the last few years, he knows where his strengths and weaknesses are compared to them.

"The 1500 is a very tactical race because it’s not getting in and going max from the start - it really is about tactics," Wiffen said. "You really have to know the guys on your left and right and what they are going to do. I think that’s why I’m looking into so much because I want to be aware of the day and have a good idea of what people’s strengths are and how you can take them apart.

“Looking at splits compared to everyone, I think I can hold the most consistently fast, maybe apart from Paltrinieri’s World Champs swim. I don’t think my middle half drops off compared to a lot of the others. The only thing I want to work on is my sprint finish because I’m not one of those guys that can come home in 25 which I am working on. I don’t have Bobby Finke’s back end.”

As for tactics, Wiffen knows to control his heats swim in order to preserve enough energy in the 36-hour time window between swims.

"I think whoever works the least in the heats will be the one who wins in the final because I feel that is always the case. Luckily going in now I have one of the fastest PB’s so I can go PB + 10 in the heats and still make it back probably. That gives me leeway mentally that if I go PB + 10 I can final. I’d say the person who goes easiest in the heats and also the person who can stick to their race strategy in the final, because when you’re in that race, you let the others affect you, and it’s all down to whoever can stick to their own and play it out.

Wiffen knows the race he needs to swim to win the gold medal, it's just a matter of executing that perfect race to take down the titans of the sport. Paltrinieri, Finke, and Wellbrock have all won Olympic gold medals, while Romanchuk has been on the Olympic podium and beaten Paltrinieri and Wellbrock head to head.

Wiffen has yet to race them in a big final, but his confidence in his training is what gives him the belief that this is his year to do something special.

“I don’t think my opinion of what I can do is going to change. I know that I’m going to go to World Champs with a winning mindset because I know I can definitely win. I also think I have age on my side - I am maybe four years younger than all of them. I am dropping time quite quick. I am pretty sure I can find areas from that swim in Stockholm to drop another few seconds. I am really looking forward to the race."

Before any of the 1500m heats go off, Wiffen has a real chance to win gold in the 800m freestyle. Based on this year, he is ranked eighth in the World rankings, but he believes a bigger swim is in him.

“I think my 800 at Stockholm wasn’t a true reflection of what I thought I was going to go. I went out in my 1500 in 7:46 and I only went 7:44 in my 800 so I wasn’t too fond of the time I went. Last time it took 7:39 to get a bronze so I think 7:37 or 7:38 to win gold I reckon. In terms of race strategy, I don’t know what everyone else thinks of this race, but I call it a sprint. It’s basically get in, go a 200 hard, then go a 400 in the middle hard, then go a 200 and blast the legs, that’s all it is."

All in all, Wiffen is the pride of Irish swimming at the moment - a nation that has never had a male win a medal at either the Olympics or the World Championships. There has been a lot of excitement generated around Wiffen from not only Irish circles, but also fans of British swimming.

"Ireland doesn’t have a lot of swimmers making World finals all the time. I was the first ever male in Budapest to make a World Champs final, and then by and large the next step is to medal. I think it’s so cool, especially at the moment. In terms of Olympic sports, swimming is not a main sport in Ireland but it’s getting up there and we are getting a lot more coverage in Ireland which is kind of cool so I think I am bringing a new light to the sport."