Swimmer Mona McSharry wins Olympic Games bronze medal for Team Ireland

It was a magic Monday as magnificent Mona McSharry won an Olympic Games bronze medal.

McSharry dug deep on the swim for home in the women's 100m breaststroke final to take third – and earn Ireland's first medal of these Olympic Games.

McSharry touched home in third in a time of 1:05.59, taking a place on the podium by just one hundredth of a second.

McSharry edged the former World gold medallist Benedetta Pilato from Italy, who finished in 1:05.60.

Tatjana Smith from South Africa won gold in 1:05.28 and China's Tang Qianting, the 2024 World Championship gold medallist, took silver in 1:05.54.

McSharry was second on the turn and it was nip-and-tuck over the last 50m of the Paris La Défense Arena with the 23-year-old getting her fingertips to the wall just in front of Pilato.

The Grange, Co Sligo native first competed with the Marlins Swimming Club in Ballyshannon and she attended Coláiste Cholmcille in Ballyshannon before departing on a scholarship to the University of Tennessee.

McSharry stood on the starting block in lane 5 in a heaving – a delegation from home including her formative coach at Marlins Swimming Club, Grace Meade - after clocking a new Irish record in Sunday night's semi-final.

McSharry lowered her previous best by 0.04 of a second when going 1:05.51, a time that sealed her place in the final as the second fastest of the qualifiers.

Smith, the South African who set the Olympic record of 1:04.82 in the heats at the Tokyo Games, had won McSharry's heat in 1:05.00.

Three years ago, at an Olympic Games delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and played out in front of empty seats, McSharry was eighth in the 100m breaststroke final. She was the first Irish swimmer since Michelle Smith in 1996 to reach an Olympic final and finished then in 1:06.94.

McSharry set the tone on Sunday morning in her heats with a 1:05.74 that was, at the time, the second fastest 100m breaststroke of her career.

In the heats of the 2023 World Championships, in Fukuoka, Japan, McSharry broke new ground when setting a 1:05.55 mark as the first Irish swimmer to go under 1:06. She was fifth in the final and had a similar place at the 2024 Worlds in Doha.

She was no strange to the big day in any case: The World Junior 100m champion in 2017 and European junior champion in both the 50m and 100m, McSharry won bronze at the World Short Course Championships in 2021 – her first on the world senior stage – having earned a European Short Course bronze in 2019.

On Wednesday morning, McSharry will go in the heats of the women's 200m breaststroke.

In June, she shaved over two seconds off her Irish 200m breaststroke record when dipping to 2:22.49 at the Mel Zajac Jr International Swim Meet in Vancouver, Canada.