British Swimming have announced a team of four athletes set to compete at the Olympic Marathon Swimming qualifier in Japan. The event is taking place in Fukuoka on May 30th and 31st.
The team is comprised of Alice Dearing, Hector Pardoe, Danielle Huskisson and Jack Burnell, where each of them will try to secure their places for the Games. Team GB has one women’s spot and one men’s spot available.
All four of these athletes competed at the FINA Marathon Swim World Series event in Doha last month, with Burnell and Pardoe finishing 9th and 10th respectively in the men’s 10km race.
In the women’s equivalent, Dearing finished 9th with Huskisson coming in 14th. Dearing won Britain’s first gold medal at the World Junior Open Water Championships in 2016, winning the 10km event in 2:04.24.1.
Dearing is Team GB’s only black swimmer, and recently told the BBC that she hopes to inspire BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) swimmers to get into the sport. She is the lead ambassador for the Black Swimming Association (BSA), a UK-based charity set up to encourage more black people to start swimming.
Recent figures from Swim England show that 95% of black adults and 80% of black children in England don’t swim, with less than 1% of competitive swimmers in the UK identifying as BAME.
If Dearing achieves Olympic qualification, she will become the first black woman to represent Great Britain at an Olympic Games.
BAMET .Don’t forget the Travellers . Been there way before the others .
Last paragraph “If Dearing achieves Olympic qualification, she will become the first black woman to represent Great Britain at an Olympic Games”. You mean for swimming. Great Britian has had many black Olympic Champions in other sports.
Will any of them qualify?