Congratulations to Kate Grey
Thornbury Swimmer Kate Grey had much reason to celebrate this week when she was named in Great Britain’s Paralympic Swim Squad for the Beijing 2008 Paralympic games to be held in September.
Kate aged 19 began swimming with Thornbury Swimming Club 14 years ago and under the guidance of Head Coach Malcolm Casey progressed through the British Swimming disability pyramid system put in place to find future Paralympian Medallists.
Kate now trains at ‘The University of Bath’ where she is in her first year of a ‘Coach Education and Sports Development’ degree. ‘The challenge of studying a full time degree and being an athlete training 18 hours a week means many of University life’s pleasures have to be sacrificed but it’s all well worth it and I have much encouragement and support from everyone around me’ she says. ‘I am in the best place in the world to enable me to reach my ultimate goal, a Paralympic medal, Bath has some of the best facilities in the country and with the opportunity to continue to train here up to the 2012 games in London I can only improve’.
The disability category system is rather complex with categories from S1 to S10 for physical disabilities and S11 to S13 for the visually impaired; Kate swims as a category S9 swimmer.
Kate swam at the 2006 world Championships in Durban South Africa, reaching the final in the 100 metre Breastroke and 200 metre Individual Medley, which is the event that she now concentrates on and finds herself ranked in the top five in world. ‘Disability swimming is evolving at an alarming rate, the dominant swimmer in the S9 class is Natalie du Toit. She was the leading Junior swimmer in South Africa until she lost a leg in a motorcycle accident In 2001 and she has raised the bar for S9, hopefully she has now peaked and the challenging swimmers can now get closer to her, also there is an ever improving program in place to find the very young talent. The GB swim squad is the youngest Britain have taken to any previous games with five swimmers under 18 years of age, including two 14 year olds’.
To be considered for selection swimmers had to swim inside a qualifying time as set by British Swimming at either of the two trials held in April 2008. ‘ As one of the leading nations in the world, Britain set very tough qualifying standards. I had to swim a two second personal best to swim the qualifying time, quite a big ask in swimming terms however I nailed the swim and swam almost a six second PB to record a time of 2.42.89 and climb half a dozen places in the world rankings. With China being the host nation and keeping their swimmers under wraps there are bound to be a few surprises and with other nations holding their own trials times can only get quicker, however I am delighted to be given the opportunity be part of the Paralympic experience and if I can find another big PB I could be challenging for a medal, that’s my next GOAL then London 2012’