SWIMMING SENSATION Gráinne Murphy has been chosen as the winner of the 2009 Texaco Young Sportstar of the Year award.

The champion from Ballinaboola becomes the second youngest sportstar to win the prestigious accolade.

Alongside the nine senior sports stars chosen to receive the awards, Gráinne will be presented with her specially-commissioned trophy at a ceremony in Dublin tomorrow (Thursday), at which An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, will be guest of honour.

After winning her third gold medal at the European Junior swimming championships in Prague, the 16year-old said that the enormity of her success had not really sunk in.

In the 800 metres final she established a new Junior and Senior Irish record. Two days before that she had triumphed in the 400 metres individual medley, and her third gold came in the 200 metres individual medley. She also took bronze in the 1,500 freestyle.

In that month alone, Gráinne broke two European Junior, four Irish Senior and no less than ten Irish Junior records - one of them the gold medal-winning time of Michelle Smith de Bruin at Atlanta.

Introduced as part of the annual Texaco Sportstars Awards programme, the Young Sportstar is aimed at a younger generation of sports stars aged 18 years and under to recognise and applaud their success on the part of young people and to encourage them in their efforts to become sport stars of the future.

Congratulating Gráinne on her success, Enda Riney, Country Chairman, Chevron (Ireland) Limited, said that 'her potential, reflected in her achievements to date, could lead to her becoming one of Ireland's greatest swimmers ever'.

Meanwhile, Gráinne has been named by Swim Ireland as part of a ten-strong squad of four men and six women for the upcoming European Short Course swimming championships in Istanbul.