Rebecca Adlington Biography Video and Pictures: Rebecca (Becky) Adlington, OBE, (born 17 February 1989) is a British freestyle swimmer. She won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in the 400 m and 800 m, breaking the 19 year old world record of Janet Evans in the 800 m final. Adlington is Britain’s first Olympic swimming champion since 1988, the first British swimmer to win two Olympic gold medals since 1908 and Great Britain’s most successful Olympic swimmer in 100 years.
Adlington was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where she attended The Brunts School.
She started swimming with Sherwood Colliery Swimming Club, and was selected for the Nottinghamshire County Swim Squad (Nova Centurion) where she currently trains. She still swims in local swimming leagues for Nottingham Leander Swimming Club, taking part in the National Speedo ‘B’ Final in May 2010.
Adlington’s great uncle is former Derby County goalkeeper Terry Adlington.
Adlington represented Great Britain in the 2008 Summer Olympics, competing in the 400 m and 800 m freestyle swimming events. She was also scheduled to swim in the 4×200 m freestyle relay but was rested in the heat and the team failed to qualify for the final. In the heats of the 400 m freestyle, she broke the Commonwealth record with a time of 4:02.24.
On 11 August 2008 she won an Olympic gold medal in the same event, with a time of 4:03.22, beating Katie Hoff of the United States in the last 20 m.
She was the first woman to win swimming gold for Great Britain since Anita Lonsbrough in 1960.
She was the first British swimmer to win more than one gold medal at a single Olympic Games since Henry Taylor won three in 1908.
In 2009 Adlington admitted she suffered with the expectation placed on her ahead of the World Swimming Championships in Rome and although she swam a personal best she was only able to win bronze in the 400m freestyle. She added a second bronze in the 4 x 200m freestyle. In her favourite event, the 800m freestyle she was shut out of the medals in fourth.
In 2010 Adlington won the 400m freestyle at the European Swimming Championships in Budapest but again failed to win a medal in her 800m freestyle as she faded to seventh.
She won bronze as part of the 4 x 200m freestyle relay team. At the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi she won a “bonus” bronze medal in the 200m freestyle and was part of the English record setting 4 x 200m freestyle relay team that also won bronze. In the 800m freestyle Adlington led from start to finish to win her first Commonwealth Games gold medal. In the 400m freestyle Adlington won comfortably to earn a second gold medal and repeat her Olympic double. She ended the season ranked 2 at 400m freestyle and 1 at 800m freestyle.
Records Set: Adlington set a new British, Commonwealth, European and Olympic record of 8:18.06 in the preliminary heats of the women’s 800 metre freestyle on 14 August 2008. She went on to win the 800 m Olympic freestyle final on 16 August 2008 in a world record time of 8:14.10, her second gold of the tournament, a full six seconds ahead of the silver medalist, and two seconds ahead of the former world record which had been set by Janet Evans when Adlington was 6 months old. At the time, this was swimming’s longest standing world record.
On 14 December 2008, she was voted third in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award.
She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.
Rebecca Adlington: The champion swimmer on why she keeps her gold medals in a cupboard, and her love of a good jigsaw puzzle
You’ve just won the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle at the British Championships. It’s all going rather well at the moment, isn’t it? I definitely can’t complain. I was really pleased with this week. My times have been very solid as well, so I’m very happy. I’m just trying to work hard and put in some good races and it paid off. I raced very strongly and I was pleased with my performances.
Do the other competitors look a bit downhearted when they see you lining up next to them? Should you not have a hand tied behind your back as a handicap? Definitely not!
Do you have a mantelpiece big enough to keep all your medals on? I don’t really keep them anywhere, to be honest. They’re just randomly spread out all over the place. Some are at my parents’ house, I’ve got some of them, and some are in the back of the cupboard.
Surely you keep your stash of Olympic medals somewhere special? [Casually] Actually, all the Olympic ones are in a shoe-bag in the cupboard.
Small Talk keeps a stash of something else in the back of his cupboard. Do you ever get bored of winning? [As if answering the most idiotic question ever asked] Erm … no. I’m just a competitive person in general. I’m just very motivated, I never know what to say when people ask me how I get myself going. I just go. That’s just how it is. I always want to do well, motivation has never been an issue for me.
You don’t have the inspirational sayings of Confucius printed on your bedroom wall, then? No, no, no! I don’t like stuff like that at all. That’s so cheesy.
Small Talk has often wondered something: what’s the point of the butterfly stroke? Is it just pointlessly hard? [After a small but telling pause] … It’s not pointless but, erm, it is hard. It’s really hard, in fact. If you’re in a public pool, then it’s probably best not to go anywhere near ‘fly. Don’t even attempt it. Let it alone. Leave it be. Don’t do ‘fly, that’s my advice.
Do you feel any pressure ahead of the Olympics in London? Not really, I’m excited more than anything. The swimming qualifying event is next year, so I still don’t know if I’ll be going. But even if I’m not, as a British person, it’s just so exciting to have the Olympics here. I’ll be trying to compete in any event I can qualify for, I’m not fussy.
Even the ‘fly? Ah – well, maybe not that one. I definitely wouldn’t qualify at the ‘fly. I’ll leave that to other people.
Has your life changed dramatically since the 2008 Olympics? It hasn’t really. Everyone seems to think I’m some millionaire now who is completely different. But I’m in exactly the same swimming squad, have exactly the same friends and have the same daily routine. The only thing that’s changed is that a few people ask me for an autograph these days.
Bet you didn’t have a phone filled with the numbers of the rich and famous before 2008, though. Who’s the most famous person in your mobile now? Chris Hoy probably. I’ve also got Jason Manford in there too.
Let’s veer hastily away from asking if Jason Manford has ever texted you late at night. You do have a swimming pool named after you now, though. That must have changed things a bit. It was so nice of them to do that because it was the pool I learned to swim in. That was where it all started for me, so it was a really big thing when they named it after me. The pool’s amazing now too. I wish it had always been like that.
You also had the Mansfield branch of Yates’ Wine Lodge named after you. There’s no higher compliment, surely. [Outraged] It was the most silly thing ever! All they did was put a banner outside. They didn’t even ask. I’ve never even been in there and I can’t imagine I ever will.
A wise move. How boring is swimming training? Or do you have some sort of whizzy waterproof iPod to listen to? I actually really enjoy training. There are 20-25 of us in our squad and we all have a real laugh together. I wouldn’t want any distractions like music – I have to concentrate and count, so music would get in the way.
What sort of music would you listen to if you did have a whizzy waterproof iPod and didn’t have to concentrate and count? Anything apart from metal and heavy rock [said with utter disgust]. Anything that’s on Radio 1 will do – pop, indie, mainstream sort of stuff.
So you’re not a big Swedish thrash fan? [Shuddering] I’m very sorry, Small Talk, but that’s not really my kind of thing.
In Small Talk’s experience, the sort of people who don’t like Swedish thrash also tend to be the sort of people who are into such things as jigsaws … I’m a massive jigsaw fan! I love jigsaws.
Well, there you go. What’s your jigsaw technique? [Excitedly] I lay all the pieces out one by one. Then I start on the edges before I group all the colours together. But I’m very specific about how I group colours: there will be one pile for the colours in the middle and others for the different colours in the rest of the jigsaw. I take it quite seriously. I don’t like other people getting involved at all. In fact, I get angry if people do – I have to do it my way.
Sounds terrifying. What’s the most difficult jigsaw you’ve ever put together? [Really warming to the theme] I do 1,000-piece ones generally because they fit on my dining room table. But for my birthday, my friends bought me a double-sided jigsaw. One side was a jigsaw of a jigsaw and it was all white. The other was a load of mental arithmetic questions that you had to answer. It was so difficult that it took us three hours.
Three hours! That’s some impressive jigsaw speed. Oh yeah, I was on it. I am always on it when it comes to jigsaws.
Since we now know who would win in a fight between a lion and a tiger, we’ll make use of your notorious shoe obsession to determine the winner of Jimmy Choo v Christian Louboutin. Louboutin everytime. Christian Louboutin is amazing.
Do you ever get much opportunity to wear his shoes, or is it all flip-flops and verruca socks around the pool? I don’t get that much of a chance, so I tend to walk around my house in them. I just love shoes, they’re a chance to be girly.
Small Talk has an image of you wandering around your front room in £1,000 shoes doing a jigsaw puzzle of an evening. Yeah! That would be a great night. That would be the perfect evening.
Would you watch a film at all? Maybe – anything but a scary movie. I can’t deal with them as I hate the feeling of being scared afterwards. I get paranoid that someone is going to leap out of my cupboard and kill me.
Surely you’d hear someone in the cupboard from the jangle of medals inside? That’s a good idea, I could make a booby trap out of the medals. It would be like Home Alone but with Olympic medals.
The perfect use for them. You were born in Mansfield and Small Talk knows a fascinating fact about Mansfield. The longest A road in the country, the A38, ends there. Do you know anything more fascinating about Mansfield than that? No.
Well, that’s probably a good place to leave this then. It probably is, thanks Small Talk.
Tom Bryant – guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 March 2011 00.06 GMT