Teenager who beat her demons aims for Olympic glory
Teenager’s first gold medals have put her on course for realising dream of Olympic success, writes Pippa Field
Watching Freya Anderson anchor Great Britain to 4x100 metres mixed medley relay gold at this summer’s European Championships, it is hard to imagine this was the girl once so shy she could hardly speak.
Confidently holding off the chasing male swimmer from Russia, Anderson, 17, helped her team set a European record, with team-mate Adam Peaty the first to reach down to congratulate her in front of a raucous Glasgow crowd. For Olympic champion Peaty, the gold was the 20th of 22 global career titles. Anderson, meanwhile, had just secured her first.
Both would go on to revisit the podium during the Championships – Peaty eventually finishing with four golds and Anderson adding 4x200m freestyle gold and 4x100m medley bronze to go with her earlier bronze in the 4x200m mixed freestyle.
“It’s pretty crazy to think I would be swimming with Adam Peaty. I never, ever thought I would be doing that when I was younger,” says Anderson.
“It’s so weird to think of him as a world record holder and Olympic champion. He’s just a swimmer like anyone else.”
It was in 2016, the year Anderson was crowned European junior 100m freestyle champion, that Peaty became the first British man since Adrian Moorhouse in 1988 to win Olympic gold in the pool.
But it was Britain’s only other Olympic swimming champion in the intervening years who had the biggest impact in shaping Anderson’s career choice.
“I grew up idolising Rebecca Adlington,” says Anderson, talking about the Beijing 2008 double gold medallist.
“I would have been seven at the time she won in Beijing. I did all these school projects on her. I’ve always been a swimmer, I’ve never been into other sports, so it was all about her. I used to make PowerPoints on her when you had to pick your idols.
“When I was younger and at a competition in Stockport, she was there. I was a proper fan. My friends and I went up and asked for a photo. I was in total awe of her and what she was doing. Every swimmer’s dream is to copy that, so to be on that track is weird.”
Anderson’s last comment is particularly significant. Tipped as one of Britain’s brightest young swimming prospects, her aim is to become double Olympic champion in the 100m and 200m freestyle.
Results at both junior and senior level suggest the teenager from Birkenhead is on the right trajectory. In 2017, she was selected for her maiden senior World Championships, reaching the semi-finals of the 100m freestyle aged just 16. A month later, she was crowned junior world champion in the same event.
This year she signed off her junior career with triple European success, while her first senior medals came at April’s Commonwealth Games, where she won double relay bronze. In a further warning to her rivals for the future, it was only after the latter that Anderson felt she had finally got the better of a back injury that had dogged her for the previous 15 months.
In the pool, Anderson undoubtedly oozes confidence. Yet out of the water, she is still getting used to the upward curve on which she finds herself.
“I find it weird when people come and ask for signatures,” she says. “I’m like ‘Me? Are you sure?’. I just write my name really scribbly. Hopefully that will develop into a nice-looking signature.
“It’s weird to talk about me and the Olympics, I never thought I would be saying that. It’s good to have a target and it feels like that’s where I should be. But then it’s so weird, thinking back to when I was younger.”
Team-mate Peaty was famously scared of water as a child. Anderson, herself, endured a stressful beginning in the sport after her parents introduced her to swimming as a life skill and she initially did not want to attend a trial at her local club due to nerves around people.
She still holds a strong dislike for open-water swimming: “It just scares me. Maybe it’s because I can’t see the bottom, or what’s in there.” Her hesitation towards swimming, however, was ultimately due to chronic shyness, an issue that continued to afflict her when she moved to study and train at Ellesmere College in 2015.
“I remember the first week I came and I was literally going to drop out,” she says. “I was really shy and hardly spoke. My coach tells me I was about to cry because something had happened. I was writing down on a piece of paper what was wrong for him.
“But even when I’ve had troubles balancing school with swimming, particularly with my A-levels, I said I can’t quit swimming as it’s the only thing I can picture myself doing.”
Comparing images of a timid Anderson with the individual who confidently poses poolside in her swimsuit for photos, it is clear how much confidence the sport – and increasing success – has brought her.
“Doing swimming has definitely helped with other stuff in my life,” says the Sky Sports Scholar. “My parents have seen how much I’ve changed and developed. Even my friends, when they watch my interviews, they all know my first few interviews were awful with one-word answers. To go from that to me now, maybe it’s shocked people, but I think they’re proud.”
Anderson proved in 2018 she could mix it with the best, anchoring her relay team to medals at Commonwealth and European level. Next July comes the World Championships in Gwangju, where expectations, particularly at individual level, will be elevated, especially with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on the horizon. Yet, for all the potential hurdles that may lay in wait, it will not be challenges in the pool that faze this swimmer.
“I just love racing so much. I can stand up and race in front of 10,000 people, but I struggle to talk publicly to 30 people. I just feel at home in the pool and in a race suit,” she says.
“Walking through the door, or the start of any meet, I just become really relaxed and focused at the same time. I don’t like losing, I’ll always fight not to lose. I love winning as well. But I don’t want to lose, that’s what it is.”
The shyness has largely been conquered, now on to her swimming rivals.