‘I want to be on the podium. My goal is an Olympic medal’ – Irish swimming sensation Daniel Wiffen

“I said, ‘Do you mind waiting?’” laughs Wiffen. The 22-year-old Armagh swimmer has “always wanted to be a world champion, world record holder” and now that he is, it’s a good time to remember how unlikely this had once seemed.

After all, Wiffen didn’t have the champion underage pedigree most of his rivals did, finishing 14th at the World Junior Championships. At the age of 15, his physiologist told him he wouldn’t compete beyond a national level. “After I broke the world record, I went to him and said, ‘What do you think now?’”

But his current coach, Andi Manley, could see his vast potential when Wiffen enrolled at Loughborough University in September 2020.

“My technique was horrible when I joined and he understood why I jumped so much (in the years after) – that’s one of the main reasons for the progression,” says Wiffen. “I really enjoy it there, everyone has a shared goal. If you’re not an Olympian in Loughborough, it’s kind of weird. When I arrived, I was the worst swimmer there, thrown in at the deep end, and you have to embrace that and enjoy it.”

Embrace it he did, and few swimmers enjoy the back-and-forth repetition more than Wiffen. “My motivation is different to everyone else’s,” he says. “It’s not for the results. I’m doing it because I actually enjoy training. I’d happily just train and never race again.”

​Now, there is a certain thing happening in Paris this summer. When Wiffen climbs on his blocks for the 800m and 1,500m finals in late July, the nation could well be holding its breath. His goal for the Olympics?

“I want to be on the podium. I could say I want to go for gold, but realistically, my goal is to be an Olympic medallist. I’ll aim for the gold but if I come back with the bronze, that’s OK. I wouldn’t see it as a disappointment.”

Daniel Wiffen on breaking the world record and his hopes for Olympic glory

If Wiffen seems to be tempering expectations, despite being the reigning world champion in the 800m and 1,500m freestyle, there is good reason, given two of the three men who beat him in each event at last year’s World Championships bypassed this year’s edition. However, the previous world champion in both events, Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia, finished well down the field.

For Wiffen, it was a reminder of how fast things change in this sport, and how little is guaranteed despite his current status.

“At every championship, there’s always a swimmer who comes out of nowhere, and at the Olympics, it’s probably going to be the same,” he says. “I’ve always got a target on my back anyway.”

Part of that is due to how active Wiffen is on social media. He’s never been afraid to speak about his goals, though given the way he backs it up, his confidence stops short of cockiness. “Maybe it makes it a bigger target if people want to beat me,” he says. “My goal is not to get beaten.”

Wiffen is currently enjoying a week off before the hard work resumes and he’s about to go into thin air on his quest for an Olympic medal, doing a four-week block of altitude training in Arizona.

He responds particularly well to that oxygen-starved air, with physiologists at the university telling him he gets “the most benefit of any athlete they’ve ever seen” from altitude training. While there, he’ll undertake a gargantuan workload, swimming over 100km a week. “It’s quite a high injury risk, but it’s fun,” he says.

To fuel that, Wiffen consumes 7,000-8,000 calories each day. In his spare time, he and his twin brother Nathan hit the cinema and Daniel reviews every movie afterwards. He has an acting background, having appeared in Game of Thrones and The Frankenstein Chronicles, but these days life revolves around shaving seconds, maybe just fractions, off his times.

A few years ago, as Wiffen started making waves internationally, he sometimes felt intimidated by rivals in the call room ahead of races. Not anymore.

“I’ve had people jump on me, step on me, shoulder me,” he says. “That was when I was a bit younger. People were a bit scared as they didn’t know what I was going to do. But at World Champs, I had none of those issues; I’m pretty friendly with all the people I’m racing.”

After last year’s World Championships, and those two fourth-place finishes, Wiffen and his coach shared some strong words as they chiselled down into why he’d come up short.

“I really stepped back and we looked at what we were doing,” he says. “We came back and had these conversations, arguments, on who was wrong and who was right and what went wrong. When we got back training, it all clicked and we knew what we were doing.”

And it’s shown ever since in his performances. But who was right between him and his coach? “I think I was right,” smiles Wiffen.