Ireland's Shane Ryan eased his way into Friday's men's 100m Backstroke final on day two of the European Short Course Swimming championships in Glasgow.

Ryan, who broke the Irish record in the heats (50.45 seconds) won the first semi-final just 0.003 of a second outside that heat time in the semis.

"I felt a little heavy to be honest in that semi, but I'm more than happy to have brought it home strongly and now I can concentrate fully on the final," he told RTÉ Sport. 

Three swimmers went faster than Ryan in the second semi-final, including the Russian gold medal favourite Kliment Kolesnikov, who is the only swimmer to go under the 50-second mark so far. 

Earlier today Jack McMillan and Jordan Sloan finished seventh and eighth respectively in the 200m freestyle final.

McMillan swam in the penultimate morning heat and finished fifth, setting in a new Irish record time of 1:43.18 to qualify in sixth place for the final. 

Sloan was placed ninth overall and initially thought that he had missed out on a place in the top eight.

However, competing countries can only have a maximum of two swimmers in a final, and as Britain had three in the top eight, the seventh-placed finisher after the heats was the luckless Thomas Dean, who dropped out elevating Sloan and giving the 26-year-old Bangor swimmer a place in the decider

In the final Sloan took the race out hard and actually led at the 50m mark, but couldn’t hold onto that pace and eventually finished eighth behind McMillian who was seventh in his first major final in 1:43.69. 

Danas Rapsys of Lithuania took the gold medal ahead of Britain's Duncan Scott with the Russian Mikhail Vekovishchev in bronze

Mona McSharry, who won a bronze medal in the 50 metres breaststroke on Wednesday, swam the heats of the 100 IM but didn’t progress but the 19-year-old, along with Conor Ferguson, Danielle Hill and Darragh Greene, set a new Irish senior record in the 4x50 metres mixed medley relay in 1:41.00, over two seconds off the two year old record, but not enough to make the top eight.

Tallaght’s Brendan Hyland broke Andrew Bree’s long-standing 400m individual medley record in the heats in 4:12.13.

Hyland didn’t make the top eight and will now concentrate fully in his main event the 200m butterfly on Sunday.