Irish swimmer Shane Ryan put in an outstanding performance in the 100m butterfly event as he set a new Irish record on Thursday.
The American-born Ryan finished fourth in his heat in a time of 52.52 seconds. That was enough to take the Irish record from Brendan Hyland as Ryan took six-hundredths of a second off Hyland’s time.
Despite Ryan’s fantastic showing, he did not do enough to qualify for Friday morning’s semi-finals.
The best 16 times progress to the semi-finals but Ryan finished 37th meaning his journey in the event is over.
Ryan, who had pulled out of the backstroke event last week due to an injury, was 48th in the pre-race rankings.
The fact that he finished eleven places ahead of where he was predicted to, and he set a new Irish record means that the 100m butterfly has been a huge success for Ryan at Tokyo 2020 irrespective of his failure to qualify for tomorrow’s semi-finals.