Britain’s Alice Tai rediscovers her love for swimming ahead of World Para Swimming C’ships

SINGAPORE – Just a few months ago, Alice Tai could barely bring herself to be poolside without crying.

The British swimmer had just come off the high of the 2024 Paralympics, where she bagged five medals, including golds in the 50m freestyle and 100m backstroke S8, her first individual titles at the quadrennial event.

But what followed was a difficult period of transition as her long-time coach Dave Heathcock retired.

Heathcock, who had coached her since 2018, was like family to Tai and played a significant role in moulding her progress in the sport.

Returning to training with her old club without him was a struggle and left the 26-year-old resentful, casting doubts on her participation at the World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore.

She said: “Every time I tried to go swimming, I would just cry. I really wasn’t enjoying it and I didn’t want to keep forcing it because I knew I would hate it more and more.

“In the past, around 2016 when I was a teenager, I already struggled with having to train every single day, and I finally found an environment where I was happy and training every day and I loved every second of it, so when that changed, it was just really difficult to deal with.”

Tai was speaking on the sidelines of a press conference ahead of the world meet, which takes place at the OCBC Aquatic Centre from Sept 21 to 27.

It was a tough period for the nine-gold world champion, who described it as even more difficult than when she had to undergo a below-the-knee amputation of her right leg in 2022.

Born with congenital bilateral talipes, also known as club foot, Tai had undergone multiple corrective operations to alleviate her condition, before the amputation three years ago to relieve the pain in her leg.

Months after the surgery, she made a stunning comeback by winning the S8 100m backstroke at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, offering a glimpse of her resilience, which was later reinforced by her dominant showing in Paris.

While recent months have been hard, the turning point came when Italian coach Massimiliano Tosin invited Tai to train with him in Milan about two months ago.

The move allowed her to rediscover the joy in swimming, as she was surrounded by other athletes who loved the sport and pushed to be better every session.

Finding enjoyment in swimming is important for Tai, who by age 17 was already a world, European and Paralympic champion.

Achieving success at such a young age also placed a lot of weight on her shoulders, which led to her feeling like a failure whenever she did not meet expectations, a mindset that Heathcock helped reshape.

Now that she has achieved everything she has set out to do, her focus has shifted beyond the pool ahead of her fifth world meet.

“On a bigger scale, I want to stay in the sport because I know I can change lives, I know there are children in Britain and around the world whose parents might look up to me and use me as an example and make sure their child with a disability has a great quality of life and does sport and all of those things,” said Tai, who is competing in six events in Singapore.

“My goal now is to keep raising awareness and acceptance, and making sure when I’m old and completely retired, I hope that I can look back on these years of my life and be proud that I tried to be part of that movement the best that I could.”

The upcoming world championships mark the first time the event is held in Asia, with 585 athletes from 75 nations and territories involved.

Among them are nine Singaporean athletes, the Republic’s largest contingent at the event.

On what he hopes Singaporeans will take away from watching the event, swimmer Toh Wei Soong said: “There are so many stories to be told and discovered, even in a country as small as Singapore, and that our local athletes have gone through and overcome so much.

“I’m grateful to have grown up in a time where I’ve had pioneers and senior athletes to look up to from Singapore, such as Yip Pin Xiu and Theresa Goh, who blazed a trail, which I continue, which all athletes of my generation continue as well, in pushing forward this idea of a more inclusive world, a more adaptive world in which you can do as you like, and there are people who believe in you, people who care, there are systems that will reward you for dreaming.”

The head of World Para Swimming, Craig Nicholson, hopes the event will have a long-lasting impact, saying: “We don’t just want to bring the championships here, we want to build something that means that para-swimming is going to grow in Singapore, but also here in the Asia region as well.”