Online Q & A Session with Olympian Antony James

We would like to announce that on Tuesday 23rd March at 6.30pm we had a live Q & A session on Zoom with Olympic swimmer Antony James, or AJ as he is more widely known.

Lots of our club members joined him for this fantastic opportunity to find out what it takes to train towards your goals, how a time out of the water can be overcome and what it was like to make the Olympics. AJ missed a big chunk of swimming when he was 16 years old, being out of the water for nearly 10 months, but he returned and got back to his best, so the enforced time out of the water due to COVID can definitely be overcome as AJ proved.

AJ is Plymouth born and bred and swam at Plymouth Leander for the whole of his swimming career. His main event was 100m Butterfly. His international career started in 2009 when he competed at the European Short Course Championships in Istanbul, Turkey. He followed this with the European Long Course Championships in Budapest, Hungary the following year. AJ competed in his first major games in 2010, the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, where he superbly won Silver in the individual Men's 100m Butterfly event as well as Bronze in the Medley Relay. In 2011 AJ swam at the European Short Course Championships in Szczecin, Poland and the World Championships in Shanghai, China. This success then ensured his selection for the GB team that competed at the London Olympics!

Our swimmers, parents and other club members found the session really insightful and inspiring and we would like to take this opportunity to thank AJ for giving up his time to give us this opportunity to see what it takes to be a successful swimmer.