London Paralympics 2012. A crowd of 17,500 cheering you on. You’ve just broken a world record and won your second gold medal of the Games.
This was something Ellie Simmonds dreamed about since watching her heroes swim on the TV as a young girl. But Ellie made this her reality. She earned two gold, one silver, and one bronze medal during those Games; setting her own PB’s she is yet to beat to this day. But what stood out to Ellie was the electric atmosphere, the unity, and the realisation that the athletes had shown so powerfully what can be achieved. What is possible, whether you have a disability or not.
Ellie’s love for swimming started when watching her older sister from the side-lines at the pool. She wanted to do it too and took to it immediately. Her competitive nature meant she pushed herself to keep improving, but it was seeing the Paralympic swimmers of Athens 2004 on her TV at home that really pushed her to take it to the next level.
Ellie sacrificed a lot, moving away from home and committing to a regimented routine that saw her training in the early hours as well as the late. But just four years after watching the athletes from her sofa, Ellie’s breakthrough came in 2008 at the age of 13, when she competed at the Beijing Paralympics winning two gold medals and becoming the youngest British athlete to win a Paralympic gold medal. This also earned her the prestigious BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year Award.
Training for something so fiercely, so intensely, a lot of what helped Ellie achieve so much was winning those tough mental battles. Not turning the alarm off, not skipping a training session, not giving up. She had buckets of self-motivation and belief that she could achieve something extraordinary. And she did. Repeatedly. But even someone as motivated as Ellie needs a break, and in 2017 she took the year off to travel the world; one of the best decisions and best years of her life.
Since retiring from competitive swimming in 2020, Ellie’s legacy continues to inspire future generations of athletes. She proves that with determination, self-belief, and hard work anything is possible.
Ellie Simmonds – video transcript
That's one thing that I'm really lucky to be able to use my name at, is creating that legacy and creating that change for Paralympic sports so that later on in life, people, no matter their disability, know that there's a incredible Paralympics out there.
I've got four older siblings and seeing them doing all the afterschool activities, I always wanted to be copying in their footsteps. I remember sitting at the sidelines watching my older sister, Katie, learning how to swim, and I was like, "Oh, I want to be doing this." And it was just, yeah, something that I just took to straight away. I just absolutely loved it.
At the age of five, I remember competing against my sister, being like, "I want to get my 100-metre badge." And I think it wasn't a sense that, oh, I wanted to be like, swimming for my club or swimming competitively, but I wanted to just get better and better for myself, but also against my siblings.
I remember watching Athens 2004 and saying to my mum, like, "Oh, how good do you have to be to go to the Paralympics?" Or, "How old do you have to be to get a gold medal?" And she was like, "Oh, you just have to do really good at whatever you want to do, at the sport that you want to do." That's when my dream was set to go to a Paralympics, and it's crazy to think four years later, I was going to my first one at 13.
I realise if I wanted to get better, if I wanted to have a chance to go to the Paralympics, I had to move away from home to the High Performance Centre in Swansea. And I think that's when I realise that yeah, it's a big sacrifice.
For qualifications for the Paralympics in 2008, I knew that I had a chance of qualifying. I made my first world championship team in 2006, at the age of 12. Lucky enough, I had a really good April trials and I swam out my skin, and that was the first time actually, I first set my world record. So it was a swim of my life. I was against one of my inspirations, Nyree Lewis, and I beat her in the 400 meters free. So I knew that I had a really strong chance of getting picked, being able to know that I was number one in the world.
But for me, I was just going in as excitement and just going out there to race, and I was just so, like emotional. Four years previously, I was sitting on the sofa watching the Paralympics, and then now I've achieved my dream to get a gold medal. It's just, yeah, the most amazing feeling ever.
The pinnacle of my career and something that I'll always take with me for later on in life was being part of London 2012 Paralympics. It was a summer that brought everyone together, and to be part of that and have the most amazing games that I did, coming away with two golds, a silver, and a bronze, and doing PBs in both heats and finals, it's, yeah, some of my PBs still last from London, 2012.
Having 17,500 people cheer for me, the singing the national anthem, it was just, yeah, the most amazing game, and also I think the whole excitement of the Paralympics was just, you could feel it, it was just a massive, massive buzz, and realising that anyone out there, yet disabled, non-disabled, can achieve anything if they put their mind to win. I think that's been really great to be part of that.
As a swimmer, you get a routine, like you swim half five, six in the morning till about eight. You go to gym afterwards, you have massage, you have physio. Then in the afternoon, you have to go back to the pool. My life was very 'routiney', so mentally for me, Rio was not a great competition, because I hated my sport. I hated like my routine that I was in, I hated things around it. So I was ready to be free from that routine, ready to just, yeah, be a normal 21-year-old in a sense, so for me to come away with Rio with a gold and a bronze, like it was great, like to have that gold medal, and to have that bronze medal, but it was all a bit of a blur, because it was like, I was doing it for the sake of it. I was doing it because that was the only thing I knew to do.
After Rio, I decided I needed to break from the sport, so I decided to, yeah, stop swimming for a year, and just travel and just figure out what I wanted to do, who I was, and 2017 was one of the best years of my life in a sense, because I was able to like wake up and think, "Oh gosh, where am I going to go today?"
I think mental is a massive game in sport. I could easily just switch off my alarm and go back to bed, and think, "Oh, I can swim later." But actually you need that motivation, because if you want to be on top of your game, if you want to be standing on top of that podium, you do need motivation, and you do need self-belief that you can achieve it all.
Swimming is one of my sports where it's not just a sport that I love to do, I'm competitive in it, but I've realise it's my mental freedom. It's where I am one with the water. I know that sounds a bit cringey, but I'm always saying to myself like, "Ellie, let's get one with the water." Even in the sea, like when it's all choppy underneath, but when you're below, when you're in your own world, it's the most peaceful place in the world.
For me, I want to inspire as many kids out there as possible. Like I remember sitting on that sofa, like watching Nyree Lewis, like get her gold medal in the Paralympics, and four years later I achieved my dream. But I think my legacy would be, I would love to just know whatever you want in life, you can achieve it if you put your mind to it.
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Ellie Simmonds became one of the world's most celebrated Paralympic athletes.
Making her Paralympic debut at Beijing in 2008 at just 13 years old, she set multiple world records throughout her career and won 5 Paralympic, 10 world and 10 European gold medals.
She is also a BAFTA winner, patron of the Dwarf Sports Association, an ambassador for Wateraid, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Paralympic sport.
