Q: What will be the hottest ticket at London 2012?
Watching my old friend Ian Thorpe return to take on Michael Phelps in the pool. That will be incredible. I’m going to try anything to be in the Aquatics Centre for that one.
Q: Why is swimming always such a popular Olympic sport?
Most people have swum themselves at some point, many of them have had swimming lessons; I get approached by parents whose kids are at swimming clubs. So first of all, they’ve felt it in a little way first hand and swimming’s one of those sports that everyone likes, they associate it with having fun, we all go on holiday and swim. Everyone can relate to the sport and the sight, sound and feel of it.
At the other end of this, the Olympics is the time when it goes a stage further and the public gets to know the names and faces of the athletes. There’s a job to be done in the middle, not just for swimming but all Olympic and Paralympic sports, in educating everyone, getting them turned on to our national championships, the qualifiers. That way they follow the story. The Olympics is the end of the story in many ways.
Q: What stands out for you about the Olympic Games?
It’s the greatest sporting event on earth. I’m a football fan and I know some people will say the World Cup is the biggest, but it’s not. This is the biggest multi-sport event there is. From an athlete’s perspective, there is something wonderful in the way it brings all the sports together, whereas normally we go to our own World Championships, in my case for swimming and diving. Here you’ve got all the teams together. It’s a chance for every minority sport to shine and one of the very few opportunities we have to try to get people involved in sport on a grassroots level.
There is something for everyone: virtually all of us have at some point in our lives swam, ran or jumped. These things are universal and reflected in the different shapes and sizes you see in the Olympic Village, from 6ft 8inch swimmers to short, stocky weightlifters and small elegant gymnasts, nobody is excluded.
Q: How would you sell the Paralympics to people who have never had the chance to experience it?
We all like success. With the Olympics, everyone who’s going to go there and sit and watch will be looking for someone in a GB tracksuit to cheer for. That’s true whether they know them or they don’t. It’s the same as anytime you sit there and watch an England football game – everyone’s patriotic.
It’s the same with the Paralympics. We’ll all be looking for the British tracksuit, it’s all to do with information and communication: who are the people to watch, what to they do. One thing’s for sure, we will be winning a lot of medals, so I’d encourage them to go and be a part of it.
We all know that in the Men’s 100metres that 10 seconds flat is a barrier. People know it’s a barrier. But times generally won’t mean anything to people unless they’re really involved in a sport and know it well. But the more they get that information across the more engaged we become. With disability sport this becomes more complex because there are so many classifications - so it’s faces and names.
Q: What was your route to the Olympic Games?
I got into swimming because I lived in Southend-on-sea by the coast.
Being born by the sea meant we were around water so that’s why it was important for me to learn to swim.
I went to swimming lessons because my Dad made me. When he was 11 he got thrown into a lake and is still petrified of water and still to this day can’t swim. He hates water but he was determined that me and my sisters, for safety reasons, would have swimming lessons. So, if that hadn’t happened to him he probably wouldn’t have been so adamant and I wouldn’t have started so early.
There was a local pool, where they took me to the next stage. There was ten of us in the class. I wanted to be able to swim to the other side of the pool first – I was competitive and I think we all are competitive to a point. But to me it was a game of who could get there first. If I didn’t I’d try next time.
My teacher was someone called Mrs. Hardcastle. That might sound insignificant. But her full name is Sarah Hardcastle. She won silver and bronze in the 1984 Olympic swimming competition. When I was seven I had the luck of having swimming lessons from an Olympic swimmer, who encouraged me to join the club.
Once I had the lessons the teacher said ‘why don’t you try out for the team?’
If there hadn’t of been a club nearby I wouldn’t have got to the next stage; if she hadn’t been my teacher and said ‘you’re quite good’, would I have ever said “mummy can I go to the club?” probably not. I was five, I liked football and other things too. Who knows?
Q: How did going on Strictly Come Dancing affect your life?
People do recognise me a lot more now. It’s ironic. I spent thirty five years going up and down a swimming pool and am famous for being a bad dancer. That’s what television does. But it’s great for my profile.
Q: Do you still dance?
Oh yeah. Only the other day I was at a function doing the whole ballroom thing. Then the announcer invited people to come and dance with me and the floor was packed out we could barely move. It was scary. But fun too.