Swim Wales has announced its full aquatics roster for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The roster will include 16 swimmers, 4 para swimmers, and 3 divers, for 23 total athletes.
The 2022 Commonwealth Games will take place in Birmingham, Englandfrom July 28 through August 8. Swimming runs from July 29 through August 3, while diving runs from August 8 through August 9.
A young roster, the club includes 18 debutants for Wales. Among the returning veterans is Alys Thomas, who won the gold medal in the 200 fly at the last Commonwealth Games in 2018.
Her 2:05.45 at that meet was a personal best and is still two seconds faster since she has been in the event in any other race of her career. She swam 2:07.90 at last summer’s Olympics and her 2022 best is a 2:11.51 from the Mare Nostrum.
The 31-year old also won a bronze in 2018 in the 400 medley relay. None of her three teammates from that event, Chloe Tutton, Georgia Davies, or Kathryn Greenslade, will be on the roster this time around.
They will be replaced, though, by a capable cast that includes teenager Medi Harris. Earlier this year, at the McCullagh International Meet in Ireland, she swam 59.24 in the 100 backstroke, which broke Davies’ Welsh Record in the event. Already in 2022, she has swum the 8 fastest times of her career in that event, in total dropping her personal best by 1.11 seconds.
The roster also includes Lewis Fraser, who in 2019 became the first Welshman under 24 seconds in the 50 fly. Earlier this year, he lowered his record in that event to 23.77, which would have been within a tenth-of-a-second of medaling at the 2018 Games.
Besides Thomas, the only other returning Welsh medalist from the 2018 Commonwealth Games is Daniel Jervis. Entered in the 400 free and 1500 free, Jervis will be seeking to add to the silver he won in the longer race in 2018 and the bronze he won in 2014. Jervis was an Olympic finalist last year, finishing in 5th place in 14:55: about nine seconds slower than his best time from 2019.
2022 will mark the first time that Wales takes three divers to the Commonwealth Games. That includes Aidan Heslop, who recently won the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series stop in Boston.
Wales won 5 medals in swimming at the 2018 Commonwealth Games: 1 gold, 1 silver, and 3 bronze. That ranked them 7th in the final medals table. That was a backslide from the 7 medals (2 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze) that they won in 2014.
Wales ranks 7th all-time in swimming medals at the Commonwealth Games: last of the 7 nations that have won multiple gold medals at the event all-time.
Wales has won three all-time medals in diving at the Commonwealth Games, but none since 1994. Bob Morgan is responsible for all of those, earning a medal of each color at three consecutive Games in the 10m platform event.
Para Swimmers selected to Team Wales:
- Lily Rice – Pembrokeshire County
- Meghan Willis – Torfaen Dolphins
- Dylan Broom – Torfaen Dolphins
- Rebecca Lewis – RCT Performance
Swimmers selected to Team Wales:
- Medi Harris – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Daniel Jervis – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Alys Thomas – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Matthew Richards – Bath National centre
- Kieran Bird – Bath National Centre
- Daniel Jones – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Calum Jarvis – Bath National Centre
- Lewis Fraser – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Kyle Booth – City of Cardiff
- Joseph Small – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Liam White – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Harriet Jones – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / City of Cardiff
- Bradley Newman – City of Cardiff
- Thomas Carswell – Edinburgh University
- Rebecca Sutton – Swim Wales High Performance Centre / Swansea University
- Charlotte Evans – City of Cardiff
Divers selected to Team Wales:
- Lucy Hawkins – Sheffield Diving
- Aidan Heslop – Plymouth Diving
- Ruby Thorne – Dive London
The sentence below the cover photo says “Medi Thomas”.