Ireland Olympic summer sports review 2023 includes a world record, a fifth Games, and Sports Person of the Year

World records, back-to-back world champions, Paris 2024 Olympic quota spots, eyeing a fifth Olympics five months after having your third child, it's all been going on for Ireland's summer sport athletes in 2023.

Let's start with the world record breaker.

That'll be one Daniel Wiffen, swimmer extraordinaire, who won three gold medals at the European Short Course Championships taking place in Otopeni, Romania, in December.

The 22-year-old was the first swimmer representing Ireland to win any gold at the championships – let alone the three he took home in the 400m, 800m and 1500m free.

Not only that but the Northern Ireland-born athlete secured a short-course world record in the 800m – of 7:20.46 – taking 2.96 seconds off Australian icon Grant Hackett’s 15-year-old best-ever time.

Not only that but Daniel was able to celebrate with his twin brother Nathan Wiffen, who was competing in the same race, in his first-ever major final in freestyle, having previously concentrated on backstroke.

Not only that but the pair have also appeared in the Game of Thrones TV series as extras.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Ireland have secured quota places for three swimmers for the Paris 2024 Games so far, with more hopefully to come with the World Championships in Doha in February offering a prime opportunity to achieve the Olympic Qualifying Time needed.

Read: Daniel Wiffen: From Game of Thrones extra to centre stage for Ireland swimming

• As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
• Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.

Rhys McClenaghan's double whammy and Fionnuala McCormack eyes fifth Olympics

Meanwhile, back on dry land, the newly-crowned winner of Ireland's top sports prize, the RTE Sportsperson of the Year, puts artistic gymnast Rhys McClenaghan alongside the likes of former sporting greats who have won the award, including footballer Roy Keane, golfer Rory McIlroy, and boxer Katie Taylor.

"It's just incredible that I'm an Irish gymnast taking home world titles, and that's never been done before. I'm so proud to be able to do that," said the 24-year-old after receiving the award.

McClenaghan defended his pommel horse title at the World Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp in October and, with it, secured a quota spot for Paris. He's now looking to add an Olympic medal to his growing collection after making the final at Tokyo 2020.

• Gymnast Rhys McClenaghan's pathway to Olympic gold has fun at its heart but serious business looms

Five Olympic Games for mum of three?

An incredible fifth Olympics is in sight for Fionnuala McCormack after securing a time of 2:26:19 at the Valencia Marathon in December, inside the required mark for Paris 2024 of 2:26:50.

Achieving the time, the sole purpose of her race, could make McCormack the first Irish woman to qualify for five Olympic Games, and just five months after giving birth to her third daughter, too.

The 39-year-old distance runner who has competed in a variety of disciplines during her career and who must still be officially selected by the Olympic Federation of Ireland for her place in France, competed in steeplechase at Beijing 2008 finishing 10th, was eighth in the 5,000m and 12th in the 10,000m at London 2012, 20th in the marathon at Rio 2016, and 25th in the same event at Tokyo 2020.

The World Athletics Championships saw five top 10 finishes for Ireland with three national records.

Ciara Mageean and Rhasidat Adeleke both finished fourth in the women’s 1500m and 400m, respectively, with a national record for Mageean, who later also smashed the national mile record that had been held by Irish running icon Sonia O’Sullivan for 29 years.

Sonia's daughter Sophie O'Sullivan has also secured the 1500m entry standard for Paris 2024, along with Sarah Healy, in a bid for one of the maximum three spots allowed per nation per discipline.

Adeleke also obliterated her own Irish women's 400m record at a college meet in June when she ran 49.20, a time that would have been good enough to tie second place with Dominican Republic's Marileidy Paulino at Tokyo 2022.

Sarah Lavin secured joint 10th in the women’s 100m hurdles with a best-ever time for an Irish athlete to secure the spot in that race, and Andrew Coscoran (men's 1500m) and Brian Fay (men's 5000m) added quotas in the men's 1500m and 5000m, respectively.

Sailing and cycling Paris spots secured for Irish athletes

With one spot per nation in each of the ten sailing events at Paris 2024, Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove are happy to have secured the sole quota for Ireland in men's skiff following a stellar performance at the European Championship off Portugal’s Algarve coast in November. The duo beat five other nations for the top spot and the sole Olympic quota available at the championships in this discipline.

A 2024 trial series will decide who gets to the Marseille start line for Ireland with Seafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan also vying for the hallowed spot.

Finn Lynch, meanwhile, secured a place for Ireland in France in the men’s one-person dinghy at the Sailing World Championships, in The Hague in August.

Three Team Ireland cyclists will be racing in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower as the cycling road race starts and finishes in sight of the iconic Paris landmark. Two men will compete in the discipline, with one also competing in the Time Trial and one in the women's, the first time in 24 years, that Ireland will field a cyclist in the women’s road race.

The quotas for the men's and women's road race, as well as time trial events for both genders, were distributed to National Olympic Committees in accordance with the World Ranking by Nations in October.

• Paris 2024 reveals routes of Olympic road cycling events

Team work paying off for Irish athletes

Equestrian Austin O’Connor, meanwhile, became the first Irish event rider to win a five-star competition in 58 years, winning the Maryland Five Star event on horse Colorado Blue in the USA in October. The Mallow man also secured a podium finish at the Badminton Horse Trials in May, the first time in more than 40 years for an Irish athlete.

The Irish Show Jumping team also claimed silver in the team final of the FEI Jumping European Championship in Milano, Italy courtesy of Michael Duffy, Trevor Breen, Shane Sweetnam and Eoin McMahon.

Ireland have secured a full squad of equestrian riders each to the team eventing and jumping competitions in Paris.

Two more Irish teams headed to Paris in July, are the women's and men's rugby sevens sides, who are now set to compete at the Olympics together for the first time. The men beat Great Britain 26-12 to win gold at the European Games in Krakow, Poland to head to their second consecutive Games, while the women's team made history in May by qualifying for their first Olympics.

Five quota spots have been secured for the boxing tournament at the Paris 2024 Games, the medal rounds of which will take place at the iconic Roland Garros Stadium, home of the French Open.

The spots were claimed courtesy of the European Games in Nowy Targ, Poland, which doubled as an Olympic qualification event in which Dean Clancy (men's lightweight), Jack Marley (men's heavyweight), Michaela Wals (women's featherweight), Kellie Harrington (women's lightweight) and Aoife O'Rourke (women's middleweight) secured quotas for Ireland.

Six boat classes have been obtained for Ireland for the Olympics rowing regatta in lightweight double sculls, double sculls, and coxless pair, in both women's and men's editions, courtesy of placings at the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade, Serbia in September.

One of those include super oarsman and interviewer's dream, Paul O'Donovan, who continued on his incredible trajectory in the men's lightweight double sculls, claiming a fourth consecutive world title in the discipline (with two single sculls top spots in 2016 and 2017 for good measure).

Famed for an interview with brother Gary O'Donovan after the siblings won silver at Rio 2016, since 2019 Paul has rowed with Fintan McCarthy who usurped Gary for the seat, the pair claiming gold at Tokyo 2020.

Siobhan McCrohan is also the world champion in the lightweight women’s scull, which sadly for the engineering graduate, is not an Olympic class.

Canoe slalom athletes secure spots to make a splash in Paris

And we'll finish where we started – with some water-based twins – this time in canoe slalom.

Robert Hendrik and Noel Hendrik have qualified the quota spots for Ireland in Paris in the C1 and K1 disciplines – single seat canoe and kayak, respectively – courtesy of their finishing positions at the Canoe Slalom World Championships at the Lee Valley White Water Centre in September.

The last representative at the Olympics for K1 for Ireland was Eoin Rheinisch, who competed at the London 2012 venue, at which the 2023 Worlds toook place. He is now the coach of Noel.

Madison Corcoran also qualified a boat in the women's K1 class, as a result of her European Games performance and a countback of qualified nations after the culmination of the World Championships.

All slalom canoeists will also be eligible for the extreme kayak event in which a bun fight ensues when all four boats are dropped into the water at once from a height of more than two metres.

With many more qualification events and rankings continuing at the beginning of next year, the stories leading up to the Games will provide almost as much drama, emotion and joy as the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games themselves.