Swimming sensation and SINI Athlete Sycerika McMahon has dominated the 2011 Irish Long Course National Championships in Abbostown, with an incredible nine Gold medal wins.
The sixteen-year old made a sunning start to the event with hat-trick of golds on day one, triumphing in a very competitive 200m freestyle final with a time of 2:00.79, and breaking her own Irish Junior record in the process. She also took gold the in 200m butterfly (in a time of 2:15.82), before adding a third just moments later, winning the 50m breast-stroke with a time of 32.74 seconds.
Sycerika’s winning form continued throughout the meet, with a comfortable victory in the 400m Individual Medley (with a time of 5:51.56) on day two, and two more medals on day three with wins in the 100m breast-stroke (with a time of 1:11.80) and 400m freestyle. The latter race saw a nail-biting finish, with Sycerika and eventual Silver-medallist Niamh O’Sullivan turning at the last wall within 4 hundredths of a second of each other, before Sycerika powered through in the last 25m to secure victory.
On the final day of the championships, Sycerika proceeded to finish just as she had started – at the top of the podium, with another hat-trick of gold medals. In the 100m butterfly, she had already set a new Irish Junior record (1:02.05) during the heats on day 3, but secured championship gold with a winning time of 1:02.06. Wins in the 200m individual medley and 50m freestyle (with times of 2:17.09 and 27.00 seconds respectively) resulted in a total gold medal haul of nine for the Portaferry teenager, a tremendous result ahead of this summer’s World Championships in Shanghai.
