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Ten years ago, the mentality in British Swimming was, ‘I am just so happy to have made the team for the Olympics’.
Now we have created a culture of winning medals and getting on the podium, while looking after athletes every step of the way’. The attitude has changed. In the past, we didn’t have the belief that we were as good as swimmers from America and Australia.
Now the coaching staff really work as a unit across the board and there’s no ego or wanting to out-do each other in the pool.
Team GB's men's 4 x 200m freestyle relay team celebrate after winning gold at the Olympics
Rebecca Adlington believes British Swimming have finally created a winning culture (pictured after winning her second gold at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing)
After the London Olympics there was a lot of talk about legacy and role models inspiring generations — it certainly did that. It gave the country a huge boost in sport in general and in swimming we completely changed our outlook.
We’ve tried to implement what America and Australia do but also tried to keep our own way of doing things. National Lottery funding has really changed things as well. It shows that when you fund sport and performance centres, it really works.
Another factor has been that in the first lockdown, swimmers weren’t able to get in pools at all. So they
