John flies to world-champion status

A SHANNON man became World Master’s Swimming Champion at 100m fly in Gothenburg earlier this month, in the 40-44 age group.
He also took silver in the 50m fly and two eighth places in the 100m and 50m freestyle. All of these four times were national records for the age group.
John Cunningham’s time of 58:55 in the 100m was just two hundredths of a second off his personal best (pb), which he set in 1990 when he was a member of the Irish team, while his time in the 50m was a new personal best.
He is the son of Jean and Bert Cunningham  but now lives in Hertfordshire in the South of England, while he works as a programme manager with an investment bank.
John said that he had been targeting the World Master’s Championships for some time. “I decided about two years ago that I’d be working towards them,” he said.
He had drifted away from swimming, until he started taking it seriously again four years ago. “I went back swimming in 2006, I hadn’t been doing much at all prior to that. I had been going to the gym and doing weight training but I hadn’t been involved with a swimming club. But in 2006, I started surfing and I thought it’d be important to be able to swim strongly for that. I joined a club and I realised that I was still quite fast. I was about a second or a second and a half slower than I had been so I thought that with a bit of effort you’d never know.”
While other commitments restrict John’s ability to train, he says he still does about three hours a week in the pool, along with another five hours training in the gym.
He said that he had been expecting a good performance in the championships but that the gold medal had been “a complete surprise” to him.
The World Masters Swimming Championships have been held every two years, with the first one taking place in 1986. There are categories for ages over 25 years and as well as conventional swimming races there are events in diving, water polo, open water and synchronized swimming.
They are run by FINA, the body for administering international competition in aquatic events.  
At this year’s event, a team of 42 Irish swimmers entered 140 events which, together with two divers, makes it the largest ever entry from Ireland in any major Masters Championship.
The championships were FINA’s largest event of 2010 with 6,750 competitors from 74 countries.