Mona McSharry has revealed she swam the race of her life with her goggles filled with water.
The Sligo swimmer, who is a product of Marlins Swimming Club in Ballyshannon, cried as she received her bronze medal at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris this evening.
But the 23-year-old revealed she was not just up against the best swimmers in the world.
When she dived into the pool, disaster struck.
She said “I could see the Chinese girl beside me so I knew that she was ahead of me so I was like, ‘I need to try and catch her’ because if she’s ahead then I don’t know what’s going on, on the other side – I can’t see that.
“I had a bad first fifty – my goggles filled up with water a little bit, so not a perfect race but it just shows you’re in it until the end and you just have to keep going.
“I was like ‘I’m not giving up, I’m going, I’m going’ and I think it was 0.01 between me and the next swimmers so that’s kind of crazy, but that’s what racing is about – close finishes!”
Mona regularly returns to the North-West from her base at the University of Tennessee.
She said she still had to actually allow the moment of becoming an Olympic Games medalist sink in.
She added “I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet that I’ve actually won a medal. I think once I get up on the podium, it’ll all become real.
“I think it’s just amazing because years of hard work have paid off, and it just feels amazing. A little bit of relief, a little bit of ‘Wow, OK, this is actually happening, and then just really excited to be in that position.”
