A teenage member of Torfaen Dolphins Swimming Club won silver in the Aquatics GB Swimming Championships held last week in London.
The 50m freestyle final was a special moment for Theodora Taylor, 17, as it was her first senior championships’ medal and broke her own Welsh senior record.
Her 24:59 time is also the fastest recorded time for a British 17-year-old.
She joined the Dolphins at the age of eight. The athlete was interviewed on BBC Radio Wales this morning. She said: “Since then I’ve been swimming so many times a week, and since I’ve been 13 I’ve been representing Wales and Great Britain internationally on a junior level.
“I’ve been with the same coach for nearly ten years, Tom Croke at Torafen Dolphins, and he’s helped me so much in terms of swimming and balancing swimming with school.
“[This is my] first senior British medal and that would lead me to be able to represent Great Britain and Wales on the international senior stage this summer which is something I haven’t been able to do before. So it opens a lot of doors and a lot of opportunities for me.”
Tom Croke
Tom Croke, her coach, told Cwmbran Life: “Thea is as good in the training pool as she is competing.
“Her competition programme is pretty thorough as she can swim all strokes across multiple events, so every competition we have a busy schedule. The 50m freestyle final was the final swim on day six so it was all about getting the race plan and skills on point, letting it rip and leaving it all in the pool.
“I had a conversation with the Aquatics GB coach pre-race and we called her time. He called a 24:66 and I called a 24:59. The work had been done and I knew what she was capable of.”
Thedora also finished fourth in the 50m fly – with a new career-best time of 26:46.
Tom said she now has her sights on some more “podium positions” to be selected for Wales at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
The British championships were held from 14 – 19 April at the London Aquatics Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.