Daniel Wiffen made history and became the first Irish male swimmer to stand on the top step of an Olympic podium, after winning the 800m freestyle final at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
But that’s not all. It also emerged that the 23-year-old swimmer who broke the Olympic record participated in the multi-award-winning series Game of Thrones as an extra in one of the episodes most applauded by critics and fans.
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Before becoming a professional swimmer, Wiffen acted in the episode “The Rains of Castamere,” which tells the story of the so-called “Red Wedding .”
In the episode, Daniel Wiffen’s sister Elizabeth plays the role of Neyela Frey, one of Walder Frey’s granddaughters, and since some scenes required a lot of extras, the now Olympic champion and his twin brother were invited.
“I did not really know anything about Game of Thrones when I was younger. My parents didn’t let me watch it, but I think my dad watched it all the time, and then my sister Elizabeth got a really good role, she was one of the Frey daughters (Neyela Frey),” Wiffen recalled in statements collected by ESPN.
“ She (Elizabeth) went, did her part and we also ended up in the ‘Red Wedding ‘ scene, in the background, which was really cool (…) In our scene we were in the living room, sitting on the top steps when the Starks came in,” he continued.
Daniel Wiffen was practically a child when the episode was filmed, as it was done in 2011, even though it was not broadcast until 2013 and, now, 13 years after it was recorded, the extra from that chapter took home the gold medal by completing the 800 freestyle swimming event after completing it in a time of 7:38.19 minutes, almost three seconds less than the previous record held by the Ukrainian Mykhailo Romachuk since the last Tokyo Olympics, in which this category made its debut in the men’s program.
A long-distance race that was, however, decided in two frantic long finals in which the Irishman Wiffen, reigning world champion, the Italian Gregorio Paltrinieri, silver medallist in Tokyo, and the American Bobby Finke, the first and so far only Olympic champion, fought side by side for victory.
But unlike in Tokyo, where the American snatched the gold from Paltrinieri and Romanchuk in the meters, in Paris Bobby Finke found a match for him in the form of the Irishman Wiffen, who withstood the American’s final attack.
A capacity for endurance that allowed the Irishman to touch the wall first with an advantage of 56 hundredths of a second over Finke, who with a time of 7:38.75 had to settle for silver on this occasion, while the bronze went to the Italian Paltrinieri with a time of 7:39.38 minutes, a second and a half more than Wiffen.
Daniel Wiffen does not rule out returning to acting
When asked if he would agree to return to acting, the Olympic champion clarified that he is open to projects that interest him and highlighted his fondness for the Game of Thrones prequel.
“If something comes along that I like, for example, ‘House of the Dragons’, if I get an offer for a role in that series, I will probably find time to do it, ” he said.
