Irish Swimmers Keane and Turner Through To Finals At Paralympic World Championships

They both recorded new lifetime bests in qualifying for the finals. Irish swimmers Ellen Keane and Nicole Turner have both secured their spot in the finals of the Paralympic Swimming World Championships in Glasgow. The talented swimmers each swam a lifetime best on Tuesday morning in their respective 100m breaststroke heats to earn themselves a place in the finals Tuesday evening. Thirteen-year-old Turner was first up in the heat of the 100m Breaststroke (SB6 class*) and showed no sign of fatigue after her fifth place in Monday night’s 400m Freestyle final. The Laois Marlins club swimmer knocked over four seconds off her previous best and finished fifth in a time of 1:48.24 to land a spot in her second World Championship final in the space of as many days. Keane was the second Irish swimmer racing and also produced a lifetime best performance impressively winning the second heat of the 100m Breaststroke (SB8 class*) in 1:22.97; shaving two hundredths of a second off the previous time she set at the London 2012 Paralympic Games. This is Dubliner Keane’s leading event and she will be hopeful of challenging for a place on the podium after this morning’s heats. The finals take place this evening (Tuesday) with Keane’s final at 8.49pm and Turner’s preceding that at 6.59pm. Both can be viewed live on the dedicated page here. Details and imagery via Paralympics Ireland/INPHO.