Every Olympic endeavour takes an uncertain direction and for Erin Riordan, it looked to have ended before being achieved. So she retired, at age 24, all but certain the chance of swimming in Paris had bypassed her.
Having chased that dream from when she first took to the pool, and worldwide also from Hong Kong to Switzerland and the United Kingdom, such was the emotional toll that Riordan felt it was best to move on from swimming completely — before that decision was affected by another simple twist of fate.
Qualification for Paris in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay goes to the top 16 countries, based on performances at the last two World Championships — in Fukuoka in July 2023, and Doha in February of this year. The Irish quartet had been sitting in 16th in Doha, after the heats, only to be relegated to 17th by .05 of a second when Slovenia bettered their time of 3:41.75 in the final.
“It had been quite stressful, after the worlds, when we ended up 17th,” Riordan says. “And I actually retired from swimming, because it’s kind of unheard of that people pull out of relays, especially the way it was standing. I took up running, I was completely done with swimming.
“Then I ended up getting a call four weeks later saying, ‘Japan haven’t met their internal standard, you better come back training’. So I was back on a flight, came straight back, and the whole time it was, ‘we think they’re going to pull out, we’re not sure. Keep training, it might happen’. And then it happened.”
That was at the end of last month, giving Riordan and her team-mates just over a month to get ready for Paris, the 4x100m freestyle heats and final on the opening day of the swimming, July 27th. The women’s and men’s 4x100m medley relays had already been assured of their qualification, sitting 13th best overall after Doha, meaning Ireland will now have two women’s relay teams, 52 years after the last representation in Munich, the Mark Spitz Olympics.
“Even getting through those two qualifications at worlds was really tough … a lot of emotions go into it. When it got taken away, it was just a lot, and I just needed my time away from the pool. I think it served me well in the long run, because I came back and I swam really well after those few weeks off. It gave me a bit of a reset. I had such a clear goal in my mind that it was just, ‘forget about everything, forget that I haven’t been in the pool for four weeks’. It was just get back in, train and do my best, and it worked out. So it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but I’m glad I’m here.”
Riordan will be joined in Paris by Victoria Catterson and Grace Davison (who is still only 16 and the youngest member of Team Ireland), with either Ellen Walsh or Danielle Hill joining them (both also qualified in individual events).
The men’s 4x100m medley in Paris will consist of Conor Ferguson (backstroke), Darragh Greene (breaststroke), Max McCusker (butterfly) and Shane Ryan (freestyle) — Ryan becoming the first Irish swimmer to compete in three Olympics.
After her original decision to retire, Riordan moved from Dublin, where she is part of the National Centre squad at Abbotstown, to Portugal, where her mother lives. Her family have been moving around like that all her life, her father’s job requiring them to move every four years.
“I was born in Japan, I’ve also lived in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the UK. Both my parents are Irish. and they grew up here, but I’ve lived abroad my whole life. I just came back here for college in 2017 (she has a biomedical degree from UCD and a MSc from DCU).
“I got into swimming when I was living in Hong Kong because my sister did it, and I always wanted to be like my sister. But since then, it’s just been my life, every single day, getting up, training.
“I went to school in the UK just to swim, basically. It was a school that had a swim programme attached to it, so yeah, we just chase those tiny moments that don’t come very often, but they just make everything worth it.
“I think especially as a younger athlete, I got such a wide perspective of how so many different athletes train. One of them is Siobhán Haughey [born in Hong Kong, a grandniece of the late Charles Haughey, and in Tokyo won their first Olympic medal in swimming]. I trained with her in Hong Kong, it gave me a wide view of the swimming world and it’s helped me as an athlete.”
Having now reached the Olympics, does that mean she’ll retire again after Paris?
“We’ll see. I’m starting to look at work, a real career. I’ll see what I can manage while doing that as well.”
