OLYMPIANS WILL MAKE you realise that time is our great luxury. Conor Ferguson, for instance, has given years for less than the amount of time it has taken you to read this sentence. To get specific: Ferguson needs to find 0.
14 seconds. But this is the rarified level where diminishing returns the law. Everyone’s aim is to break it.
Ferguson is a swimmer who specialises in the 100m backstroke, and he is lining up at the Irish Olympic trials this week in what his final shot at qualifying for the Paris Olympics. As a 16-year-old, he missed out on a spot at the Rio games by half a second and five years later he missed out on Tokyo by slightly less. This week’s meet at the National Aquatic Centre in Dublin marks his final chance to meet the Olympic qualification time for Paris.
The golden number is 53.74 seconds. Swim within that this week, and Ferguson will forever be known as an Olympian.
It’s a case of three strikes and out: he has to make it once over either his heat, semi-final, or final this week, or else he is out. “I know I am capable of doing this time, if not going faster”, he says. “I believe that because of what I am seeing every day in training.
It is just doing it on the day. That’s what it comes down to.” He came close to meeting the time at the recent world championships in Doha, clocking 53.
9. If he can shave 0.14 seconds off that time in Dublin this week, then he will have reached his goal.
Ferguson, like Irish Olympic medal hope Daniel Wiffen, tra.