As he stood in the mixed zone at last year’s European Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships in Samorin, sportingly saying all the right things after the unsuccessful defence of his 200m backstroke title, you would not have thought John Shortt was distraught.

He was.

With his parents Frank and Kara looking on from the stands,  Ireland’s up-and-coming talent had endured a reversal of fortune he half suspected might come to pass as he struggled to finish third in a race won by Hungary’s Zsombor Racz.

“I hadn’t really arrived in very good form at the 200 in that meet,” he told European Aquatics. “I went into that final as defending European junior champion and I knew I had lost the race with about 50 metres to go. I was very lucky to get third.

“I was just gutted. I couldn’t understand what the hell I was doing. It was very hard, a pretty frustrating time.

“But I’ll always remember my coach John Szaranek with his iconic deadpan stoicism. He comes up to me and he goes: ‘Look, it is what it is. Let’s go in the 100.’

“Whatever else I do in my career I’ll never forget that moment…”

In retrospect that moment was the turning point of a year in which Shortt finished as a world junior record holder and owner of a first senior European medal.

Two days later at the outdoor pool in Slovakia’s Olympic training centre he won the shorter race comfortably, recording 54.09 to secure what would prove to be the first of a succession of 2025 triumphs.

“It was a massive up-and-down week,” Shortt recalled. “And I was so proud that I could get back on the horse, because some people had made mistakes in those Championships and didn’t get anywhere near their back-up races.

“My mum was in an absolute state. She was crying, she was so happy for me. And my brother Christian, who is usually quite laid back about things – as is my dad – he was in tears on the phone.

“It was just such a nice thing for everybody after such a tough week. It was lovely to have my parents there.”

The next marker for the Galway swimmer was the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where he made the 200m backstroke semi-finals, clocking 1:57.30.

“I’d been very worried about that event coming into the worlds so I was just happy to get back to near-ish to my pb,” he said. “And as the summer went on the better I raced.

“It kind of makes sense now why I didn’t race particularly well over 200 at the European juniors. I got a really good training block after the trials in April and I didn’t race again until July.

“That was because I had training camps and I had my final exams to do starting in early June as well.

“So the worlds was decent enough – and it was fun to watching Hubert Kos and Pieter Coetzee in the 200 back and seeing the new standards there.

“1:54 wasn’t going to cut it any more in terms of getting into medal positions. It could be 1:53, it could even be 1:52s as well. So it’s really exciting to see how the backstroke is progressing.

“But obviously by the time the world juniors came around I was in very good form.”

At the Romanian venue of Otopeni Shortt became only the second Irish swimmer to earn a world junior title after Mona McSharry in 2017.

He completed the 100/200m backstroke double, winning the shorter distance in 53.86 and taking gold in the latter event in a national record of 1:56.19, finishing almost two seconds clear of Italy’s Daniele del Signore.

For good measure, Shortt added bronze in the 50m backstroke.

And there would be one more visit to the top of the podium before the year was up – at the European Aquatics Short Course Championships in Lublin, where he finished seventh in 100m backstroke and took 200m backstroke gold in a world junior record of 1:47.89.

“I’d love to be able to tell you that that was exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “All I really wanted to do was to go sub 1:50 point.

“I didn’t fully know what I was capable of although I knew I was going really well at that point. I was just really excited to see if I could make the final, and then I was doing a 1.48 as fastest qualifier in the semi-finals.

“So I said to myself, ‘Well, OK. This could be on here.’ “

That positive attitude has yielded further excellent results this year as he has prepared for Paris 2026.

This summer he raced at the Canet stop of the Mare Nostrum Tour, where he finished fifth in the 100 backstroke and second in the 200 backstroke. More recently he finished second behind Switzerland’s Roman Mityukov in the 200m backstroke at the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome. 

Asked about his Paris 2026 ambitions, he responded: “I think the goals now are not extremely specific in terms of timings and positions.

“I just want to keep getting better in terms of placement at competitions. So I want to be making more finals, and not just in the 200 but I want to see what I can do in the 50 and the 100 as well.

“I don’t want to be one-dimensional and only do one event. I want to do other things, and hopefully there will also be a couple of relay opportunities.

“It’s going to be an even more stacked field, although I’ve raced a lot of those guys this year and it’s not crazy to say I would like to go in there and compete for those medals,

“But at the same time that’s just early-season racing and you never know what people are going to show up with when they finally get to August, so I am expecting those guys to be coming out all guns blazing.

“All I can do is try and stick to my race plans and not to try to force anything because what I’ve learned in the last two or three years is that that never works out. Race with an open mindset and see what you can do…

“We were in Paris in March for the Giant Open which went really well. It was in the pool where they are going to hold the Europeans and so I got a walk-through of how it’s going to be laid out.

“It’s an absolutely fabulous facility, a really fast pool as well. So to be honest I am expecting some extremely fast racing there.

“I think all the 200s are going to be serious, serious competition. I think it’s going to be a fascinating 200 back in terms of semi-finals and finals. Ireland is sending its biggest ever team to these Championships, which are going to be seriously, seriously stacked.”

Shortt is also looking forward to being in a city he first visited three years ago as part of a family trip to watch Ireland’s Rugby World Cup match against South Africa – which saw the Irish win an epic contest at the Stade de France 13-8. 

“It was a brilliant game, and there was such a buzz around Paris as well,” he said. “The commentators had noted that the Irish had basically set up camp in Paris. The craic was first class.

“And it’s so cool that we will be competing just 500 metres away from the Stade de France where we saw that game.”

Like his team-mate Daniel Wiffen, the Paris 2024 800m freestyle champion, Shortt is set on visiting the Sacré Coeur Basilica in Montmartre, which has the iconic stairways where the action finale of the John Wick: Chapter 4 movie, starring Keanu Reeves, was filmed. 

“He has to climb up these massive stairs,” Shortt said. “He keeps getting kicked down and he has to go back up again.”

It’s not hard to see the appeal…

Swimming at the European Aquatics Championships Paris 2026 will take place from August 10 to 16.

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics