DAWSON WON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ IN TOKYO MEDAL BID
Thanks to the delay of the Olympics, backstoker has recovered from injury and overcome self-doubt to have a place on the podium in her sights
HAD the Tokyo Olympics gone ahead last summer as planned, Kathleen Dawson would almost certainly not have been thinking about winning medals.
The 23-year-old has been one of Scotland’s brightest talents in the pool since she was a teenager but a torn anterior cruciate ligament in 2018 set her progress back significantly.
So while the one-year delay of Tokyo 2020 was far from ideal for most athletes, for Dawson it was a stroke of luck and afforded her the time and space to recover from surgery, overcome moments of selfdoubt and regain the form that had seen her win European Championship individual bronze and relay gold, in 2016.
“There’s obviously points during that injury journey when you feel ‘ Oh God, it’s stagnant or it’s going up and down’. And you just don’t know how the end result will turn out,” the backstroker says. “So I would never have believed that I’d be at this point two years, three years later.
“Lockdown definitely benefited me because my last swim from before Covid hit wouldn’t have been a podium potential swim. So I’ve definitely used lockdown to my full advantage and come out the other side well.”
Dawson’s injury, and her ability to bounce back from such a severe set-back taught her much about herself, and her performance at the British Olympic Trials last month shows she bears few scars from such a debilitating injury.
At that meet, Dawson broke the Scottish record in both the 100m and 200m backstroke, becoming the second fastest
Briton in history in the 200m and the fastest in a textile suit.
Selection for Team GB duly followed and Tokyo will be Dawson’s Olympic debut having narrowly missed out on a spot at Rio 2016. As a child, the University of Stirling swimmer, who spent her early years in Kirkcaldy before moving south to Warrington, had becoming an Olympian as a major goal and so to now know that the dream is soon to become a reality is surreal.
Her start in the sport was challenging; she was overlooked for a junior team in favour of a boy, which gave her much of her early drive. Then becoming a team-mate of Olympic silver medallist Michael Jamieson at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 was “very inspiring” as she attempted to make her mark on the senior scene.
But it is the prospect of making history for Scotland that now pushes her on.
If Dawson returns from Tokyo this summer with a medal around her neck, she will become the first female Scottish swimmer to win Olympic silverware in 69 years, with Helen Gordon the last to do it at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
Dawson is not intimidated by the prospect of ending Scotland’s medal drought, but it is only in recent months she has started to fully believe she has what it takes to compete, and beat, the world’s best.
“I’ve been told since I was a kid that I can go this far; my coach at Warrington Warriors always imposed his belief on to me but now I’ve started thinking ‘yeah, why not? Why can’t it be me’?” she says. “It’s only been recently, in this last year really, that I’ve really taken on that belief and applied it to my swimming. It wasn’t just words, I really do believe it now.”
While Dawson’s priority over the next few months is to ensure she is at her best by the time the Olympics kickoff – she aims to break the British record in the 200m by the end of the summer – her immediate goal is the European Championships, which begin tomorrow in Budapest.
Dawson is one of nine Scots selected for the 24-strong GB team, spearheaded by Olympic champion Adam Peaty, and the event will provide an invaluable marker of what more has to be done ahead of the Olympics.
Dawson’s training partner and fellow backstroker, Cassie Wild, is also heading to Budapest in one of her final tune-ups before jetting off to Tokyo, while stalwarts of the British team, Duncan Scott and Ross Murdoch, will be in the hunt for medals.
Evelyn Davis, Lucy Hope, Keanna MacInnes, Emma Russell and Katie Shanahan complete the Scottish contingent going to Hungary.