Daniel Wiffen: Olympic gold medallist open to changing training base after Irish Open

Wiffen said he is expecting “to swim the best ever so I don’t have to make a decision” across the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m events he will be competing in, despite his recent lack of competitive action.

He outlined his goals as swimming the 400m around 4.33 seconds, the 800m below 7.42 seconds and the 1500m under 14.40 to assess whether his time spent in California has been successful.

The County Armagh man also cited Dublin as a potential future base if he does decide to move, but emphasised that doing so would be heavily dependant on his performances in Bangor.

“If I’m around those times, under or around PB, then that’s great. That obviously means the training is working, and if it doesn’t work then I [have to figure out] what I’m going do after,” he added.

“I’m thinking of coming back to Dublin if it doesn’t go well, but, we have to see. If I swim lights out in Bangor, then my decisions obviously can’t have been made.”

Wiffen also explained the main differences he has encounter between training in England and in the US, where they use yardage instead of metres.

“The training is just quite different and, even though I don’t swim a lot of yards, I just think being in America is fun. There’s quite a lot of distractions, and it’s a good lifestyle but, it’s not the same as what Loughborough was like,” he said.

“[It was] all about grind, very similar weather to Ireland and I love swimming in the rain and when the weather is dull. When you’re in the sun everything becomes a lot harder and the motivation becomes a lot harder.

“When I’m swimming in California, my motivation is I’m with a really good training group and everybody’s pushing each other, where as in Loughborough, I feel like it was more self-motivation, I was getting there because I wanted to win.

“I wanted to do all these things where I feel like another group is kind of pushing me to swim fast, which I like, but I think I want a bit of the self-motivation back, so we’ll have to see how the next week goes.”