8,000 calories and about 500 lengths: What does a day look like for Olympic champ Daniel Wiffen

IT TOOK DANIEL Wiffen 7:38.19 over 8oom to become an Olympic champion and Olympic record holder.

The distance is not his favourite, that is 1500m and Wiffen will begin his campaign for double gold on Saturday morning. 

But those distances are nothing on the lengths Wiffen puts in on a daily and weekly basis to get to the peak of one of the most competitive sports there is. 

He has spoken before about how he can clock up to 85km every week to hone his skills. To break that down, that’s 3,400 lengths of your average local pool. 

He brings these lengths down as it comes closer to a meet like the Olympics and before Paris he was in Turkey for warm weather training.

To power his 6’4″ frame across these distances, Wiffen can take on board somewhere between 7,000-8,000 calories a day. 

Wiffen has always been very open about his training and preparation and much of this is detailed in his Youtube channel, which he shares with his twin brother Nathan, also a competitive swimmer.  

So keen is he to share it all, Wiffen made sure to plug his channel and urge people to subscribe to it after he received his gold medal on Tuesday night. 

Wiffen was born in Leeds but his parents moved to Co. Armagh when he was two years old.

He is now based out of Loughborough University, where he combines training full-time with his studies. 

In a video outlining his daily routine, the 23-year-old describes a day that begins at 5.45am and takes in two swimming sessions with several gym sessions and carefully managed nutrition. 

Aside from the mountain of food we see in the video, Wiffen has outlined that his training food can consist of cereal, yoghurt, protein shakes, protein bars, energy gels, cereal bars and his ‘specialty’ Spanish omelettes. 

The main non-swimming activities he takes in are an hour of Playstation, which he says is usually online with his training group, and a lecture from 2-4 pm, which he describes as ‘relaxing’ because it’s a break from thinking about swimming. 

“People don’t know I’m ‘the swimmer’, it’s quite nice… I go in and don’t think about swimming. It kind of takes your mind off it, which is good in sport,” he says.

Here’s what that routine looks like, according to an article on the Loughborough University website. 

5.45am – Wake up/breakfast

6.15am – Dry land work, stretching

6.45am – 8.45am – 8km swim

9am-10am – Powerbase gym session

11am-12pm – Nap

12pm-1pm – Lunch at the Elite Athlete Centre (EAC)

1pm – Gaming with teammates

2pm – 4pm – Lecture

5.30pm-8pm – Swimming training

8pm – 9pm – Dinner at EAC

9.30pm – Go to bed

Wiffen will be back in the pool in Paris at the La Defense Arena on Saturday morning. He’s up in Heat 3 of the 1500m Freestyle, with the heats beginning at 10.30am Irish time.