TULLY KEARNEY | 10-time Para Swimming World Champion

Intro we were basically just praying so myself and Ellie Charlottes are both on Adams so we purposely put our time slots directly out the pool during the races just in case on the odd chance we were randomly tested in case because if it was at the portal then it would have counted um so we were kind of just praying that some drug tester would randomly turn up but unfortunately they didn't which means that the world record doesn't count but it counts as a European record on a British record welcome to the propulsion swimming podcast where we aim to give swimming the coverage and publicity it deserves every week we celebrate the sport we love with amazing special guests and topics from around the swimming pool and now here are your hosts Scott and Dan hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the propulsion swimming podcast I'm your host Scott and joining me as always is my good friend Dan and as usual for this podcast we are talking all things British swimming with a name whom everyone should really be a lot more familiar with than they most probably are yeah I mean we're joined by a fantastic athlete this week and like Scott said one that everyone in the swimming World should know and outside of swimming actually um Scott will talk to you guys through some of her credentials in a second when we bring her on she's had some incredible achievements and I feel like she's got more to add to her tally as well yeah now before we get into this week's conversation just a little gentle reminder if you are one of our regular listeners on a podcast providing platform like apple or Spotify if you could go ahead and leave us a little review we would greatly appreciate it not only does it help this podcast grow but it will also help kind of just swimming podcasts in general and push them into the wider reaches of the sporting world right then without further Ado please welcome on to the podcast Tokyo 2020 paralympic Champion 10 time world champion and European Champion taliq Kearney Tali thank you very much for joining us this week how are you yeah I'm all right thanks how you guys yeah we're good it's uh it's Monday when we're recording this it already feels like a very very busy week but we will Soldier on Through The Dark Knights it doesn't know when it's getting cold as well you know so but we're good I think we we get quite geed up for these podcasts don't we so we'll find the energy in literally about five seconds time About Tully's Disability so for this podcast today I think it would be really good for our audience to get to know you just that little bit better so why don't we start off with your classification in the sport of Paris swimming so you swim as an S5 sb4 and sm5 swimmer so for our listeners who aren't aware of the classification system what is what is your disability in the sport and how does it affect your swimming so I was born with mild dark Leisure cerebral palsy which basically means that my left side is weaker and the muscles in my lower body are really tight so it affects movement um and then as I started to get older I started to get some symptoms that weren't typical of cerebral palsy and after a few years of tests I was diagnosed with a neurological movement disorder called dystonia so I have generalized dystonia um there's many different types like cerebral palsy and it affects everyone in different ways but for me it causes involuntary muscle spasms and contractures so it limits my range of movement and my ability to move so I think the easiest way to explain it to someone is if you can imagine you want to activate your hamstring so for me if I'm trying to activate my hamstring my quad also activates so it makes my leg really difficult to move oh wow and that must be quite a weird thing to I don't know if you you focus on activating one muscle but then another one contracts can you describe the feeling of that because of course we have no idea does it feel weird well it's like you've got two muscles fighting against each other so it's it is quite weird but I found like with the stone if I focus on moving the worst modestonia gets so I try and not so I try and focus on Contracting a muscle but also not thinking about it at the same time okay so it's a lot of muscle memory and reflex kind of movements yeah so how does it affect you in the pool then so compared to an athlete like me and Dan what would your training look like with your condition this has changed a lot over the years so my dystonia is Progressive so it's gotten a lot worse as I got older so I actually started as a S9 swimmer and as my dystonia got worse I dropped down classification so previously um up until about 2016. um I was quite mildly affected as an S9 to the in the physical category there's S1 to S10 so S10 is a really minimal impairment so it might be someone with the lower part they're limiting a club foot mod cerebral palsy um part of the hand missing so it's a very minimal impairment compared to an able-bodied competitor um so as a nine obviously I was quite a millionaired athlete so then it basically obviously weakness on the left side um and I didn't have a full leg kick so I could still kick I could still dive in Tumble turn but I just didn't have a full leg kick and this especially affected me on things like breaststroke um and as it's got worse it's got to the point now um with where motherstone is at that I have no use of my legs in the water so I start in the water using a starting device um I'm very lucky I think because of all the years of swimming of the muscle memory I can still Tom will turn um but I can't kick so now I'm just upper body and my upper body is also impaired so is it gradually going to get worse and worse as well um probably and it's it's kind of one of the unknowns with um there seems to be a typical Trend with developing dystonia or generalized Estonia specifically at a young age like kind of like the age I did around 13 14. there seems to be a period where you get a massive decline for five years so if over five years you're rapidly getting worse and then it kind of stabilizes so I haven't rapidly got worse for quite a few years now I've been fairly stable just with some minor subtle changes but I think it's kind of expected that slowly over time I'll get a couple of like more changes but nothing dramatic hopefully So when you say there's subtle little changes that you're doing is that reducing training and just concentrating on racing every now and again is it focusing on a different sport that isn't swimming um kind of all of it so okay okay obviously with having a high level of impairment um and with having a lot more muscles that contract when I don't want them to my fatigue is very high um so we've had to adapt the way I can train how much I can physically do in a day is drastically different so I went from like nine or ten two hour sessions a week in the portal to three or four um like one hour 45 minutes or one hour sessions um and I haven't actually been able to do that for a while so it's you know it's been it was quite a dramatic change it was very hard for me to get used to that and for me I like it was I struggled because I didn't feel like an athlete because I wasn't able I'd always like all these years it had been drawn into my head to be assuming you've got to swim every day you've got to do like doubles every day you've got to do all this stuff and I can't do it anymore and that was really hard for me to get my head around is that how can I feel like an athlete when I can't train um and that was kind of where the Athletics came in so I had a really good friend of mine who I met at University it was also a sports scholar she's a parasolical she's amazing girl Hannah dines and she kept saying for me for years or you should come and try frame running it's this really cool like adaptive sport it's new and oh it's really exciting and I just looked at like I'm a swimmer why do I want to do athletics swimmers don't run no yeah I just looked at like I've got like because she also has cerebral palsy but I just looked at her like you do realize I'm a full-time wheelchair why would I be running um and basically at the end of 2018 I decided to have bilateral shoulder surgery so I couldn't swim for about six months and that was really tough for me I think I'm a typical athlete that I'm quite crazy like I'm a bit of adrenaline junkie and I love training and competing so for me the coping mechanism for my disabilities was to swim because in the water I feel free I don't feel disabled like as a kid I could keep up with kids my age and that's kind of why I fell in love with it so because that was taken away for so long I was like well I need to find a way of exercising one just to keep fit and keep movement which is really important with neuromuscular disabilities like cerebral palsy and dystonia because if I'm not using the muscles I'll lose the ability so it's really important to keep going some level of Fitness um and I thought well what's the harm in you know going down to the track and scene what this is all about so Hannah stored her frame um at a track nearby in Stockport so she took me down to when the wheelchair Racing Club were training and basically got me on the track with them and I just absolutely fell in love with it like I've never been able to run and all of a sudden on this Frame I can literally like run for Miles so it was just really really cool um so originally it was just to get over surgery um and then I kind of realized that actually this is really helping my fitness and for me moving my legs is so much harder to move my arms because of how stiff my muscles are that my heart rate is really high compared to what it is in the pool so it's actually a really easy way for me to build up cardiovascular fitness compared to in the water because I've still got quite a lot of issues especially with my right shoulder um so unfortunately I can't train very much in the water because it gets really irritated and I can't really swim at Speed without it getting irritated which then impacts training so all the speed work and high intensity work is generally done on land yeah I mean I was going to ask you about injuries um with your disability of muscles Contracting and involuntary movement so flat you get injured often is it a regular occurrence um so I was quicker that I didn't really pick up any major injuries until I dislocated my rock should order at the trials for 2012 paralympic games which again took me a long time to recover from um and I was told I probably wouldn't get back to swimming after that and I'd need extensive surgery but somehow I managed to avoid that um and then it wasn't Rooney until 2015 that I started getting ongoing issues and I think I that was when I started to need to use a wheelchair more and in the last um like probably since about the end of 2016 2017 I've been a full-time wheelchair user so I need my arms for everything which obviously increases the load for your arms um so I have had the last since I had shoulder surgery I've kind of gone through this trend of I think it's quite common for athletes you fix one thing and you find loads of other issues um I really struggle with um my tendons and obviously there's damage from dislocating my shoulder damage from swimming all these years from the repetitive overhead movements and needing to use my arms 24 7 to get around um so I've had multiple multiple injuries there was a point I think in 2019 I was in the water for a week out for a month in in for a few days out for three months like I was constantly out of the water with injuries so how look how lucky do you feel that you found this love for essentially frame running which has given you this Fitness base which you can very quickly fall back on I think I'm extremely lucky I think it's quite rare for people with Progressive disabilities to get back into the sport after but then to be actually to actually be able to find a way to train in a different sport to help your sport I think it's quite unique you can I'm so grateful to Hannah because without her like there's no way I would have figured that out I would never have thought of of trying it and it's not something that my coaches would have immediately gone to like oh yeah let's try cross-training and actually it took me a long time to convince them they actually helped yes completely out of the swimming sphere whatsoever isn't it yeah so whereabouts are you training right now because I think I've seen on social media you you're kind of between Loughborough and Manchester is it is it a bit of a complicated situation Tully's Training Setting yeah so obviously there's been a lot of changes within butchering and um last season my coach of about seven years was made redundant and there was a lot changes um with the merge between all of disciplines of British Ming and a restructure so at that point we didn't have a solid coach based in Manchester the performance center there we had coaches that were traveling and rotating and there was just obviously when you've got you've not got one set coaches a lack of communication and I got quite a bad injury so I ended up going to Loughborough for two weeks because um injured athletes aren't allowed in training camps and when you're at National Center of if there's a training camp everyone goes away there's no one concern you yeah so I went to Loughborough and I loved it so much that I asked to stay so I ended up staying there for about three months um but unfortunately the Paris swim lead coach that left um so I've come back to Manchester temporarily until December and trying to decide what I want to do ah temporarily I was going to ask you do you have a rough idea of going back to Loughborough or are you aiming to stay in Manchester you have a rough idea of what to do um I keep going back and forth I think from prioritize performance or mental health um I generally struggle in Manchester's environment that I struggle with um there's a lot that happened pre-real obviously on my disability getting worse but also we had um we had a bit of a horrible situation in the center with the way the coach was um so from that I actually was diagnosed with PTSD which for a long time thought I was in denial about I was like how can I have PTSD I'm just like you know just from a training environment um but I know over time like it's quite obvious to me now and I've accepted it but I'm always going to struggle with the Manchester environment because of that and obviously I've worked on it there's the setup and the environment is very different now um but it's always going to be something that I struggle with and generally struggle with Manchester so in Loughborough I'm just way happier it's just I can't being in a national Center you've got everything you could ever want and needed on site it's obviously going to Loughborough and swimming for Loughborough Unity we're just trying to figure out how much support I could actually get there and if it's actually visible to for me to to go there and it is basically do I leave and take a risk that I won't get everything that I need performance-wise but I'm going to be really happy and over the summer I think I've shown that being happy you can make me swim way quicker or do I stay somewhere where I can get everything I needed but I'm going to be potentially miserable oh man it sounds like a tough choice but I think in my head I think I'd know I think mental like we speak so much on this podcast about mental health always comes first for us when it comes to whatever we're doing if we need like just two weeks off the podcast we just take two weeks off the podcast um in a happy environment is is key so what what do you think would be missing then from the Loughborough environment if you were to move there because it is a national Center in the sense of the Able Body but not for the the paragos so what is the difference then um well because obviously there's three National centers for British in bath Loughborough and Manchester um Manchester is the only one where Paris swimmers are currently allowed but it will be opening up soon to everybody twins as well but it's persons aren't allowed in Buffalo currently um so moving to laugh foreign University so obviously leaving the national Center you've got everything you could ever want your coach as a British woman coach every time you go away you've got the benefit of your coach being there and not having to have sets written and you know have it um given to you by a different coach so obviously you'd lose you'd lose that contact UM I think just things like we get we get so much stuff so we get soft tissue therapy provided for as a Manchester um twice a week at the minute three times a week because we don't have a physio because he left but um so you couldn't get that in Loughborough even though um I can't get soft tissue unless I pay for it and then I have to pay for training fees to try out for uni because I'm not at the uni so it just basically it's just more cost apply me yeah it's the rehab stuff as well because obviously each Paris summer will have their own specific like physio stuff as well and that wouldn't be available left where I imagine and it's I can't imagine it's cheap you know so I'm quite lucky because I'm offended athlete I can get through it through the English and shoot sport but again because in Manchester we have everything in-house so we don't have to use the Eis so basically the way the Institute of sport works is that each sport has to bind to like each individual area so because there aren't any power swimmers in Loughborough we don't buy into it so it it just means that the pot of money would have to be spread throughout everyone on the program I mean it's just adding an extra area for it to be spread through oh man I mean we we saw at the Commonwealth Games this Summer that there there was an integration of the power athletes within kind of the Able Body it wasn't just the schedule it was like the full squads and the full training so maybe that needs to happen a bit more often I know you guys have your own specialized training but there is the resources there I think people like I think some coaches are a little bit worried about profits because like understandably they don't fully understand some of our disabilities and they don't want to injure us or you know do something that's wrong but um especially for someone like me with a neurological impairment there's a lot of people cerebral palsy over the years that have been over trained because they've been treated like an amputee or an able-bodied athlete which is obviously very different so if someone that's got a visual impairment and amputee or learning disability the rest of their body will work perfectly normally whereas someone with a neurological in impairments of cerebral palsy or brain injury or someone's had a stroke any um Ms anything like that none of like nothing works 100 so that it takes as longer to recover um in German cerebral palsy it takes sometimes it takes us a bit longer to get up to where we can actually swim at full speed in training sessions and things so it's a little bit adapted so I think some people just get a little bit nervous sometimes it's learning the disability because I remember when you spoke to Will Perry and we were saying well surely things must be different because you know the limbs are shorter and he was like no I push myself just as hard as an able body so my swim 10 times a week I'm in a gym x amount of times and he's like yeah I eat just as much and everything is just as normal but of course for someone's cerebral palsy like yourself and others that the training will be have to be adapted to make it easier I suppose or reduced in some sort of way but it's just learning that there's some different disabilities and going on CPD courses or something like that I think that's what's required so the biggest thing for me is as my conditions got worse is that I I struggled to swim back to back days so I swim every other day to give me the rest and then I do gym on on my non-swim day so we just balance things really well yeah yeah well I hope the situation sorts itself out because I mean it's a really tough decision and I'm not gonna make that for you obviously um but I don't know I kind of wish it wasn't an All or Nothing kind of in terms of national Center setups especially for you paragos because the the Paris swimming in this country is exceptional and that knowledge rather than being one hub surely it could be spread out a little bit better I think that's just going to be the first summer to do it you know I think like over the over a quite a few years I think that's what the plan is to have all the centers open up to both but obviously that's going to take a lot of time and I know Loughborough is a bit trickier because of the love for uni Squad to the public the general uni slots the pool is used frequently so having extra pool slots isn't as easy as where at the minute obviously the Manchester quite accent has been redone for the World Championships but usually there's we have a lot more free time in our downstairs pool so adding an able-bodied um Center to the power centers isn't really that much hassle to add on hmm oh man um if anyone hasn't noticed so far from going through this podcast you've been through a lot of ups and downs in your Up And Downs During Career career so far um I think there was did you withdraw from your first Paro games in Rio or before it happened um only then to qualify at Tokyo and not just qualify but win Golds hit World Records um it must seem like a bit of an emotional roller coaster at times oh yeah it certainly has um I think we've drawn from Rio like I never thought to swim again never thought I'd be able to go to Planet the games I just thought that and at that point my career wasn't even the way that my stone progressed I had to relearn how to live independently how to do everything else myself um with my increased level impairment so at that point swimming wasn't really in my mind um and then I eventually got back into it and I think the turning point is when I went to the European championships in 2018 like surprised Everyone by qualifying um and won a gold in the bronze and I think that kind of really open mind that actually maybe maybe I've got a chance maybe I can still go to parathic games and see had the surgery which was really difficult to recover from and um surprised everyone um well not my coach my coach knew what I do he always he always used to come up to me and he was just telling me like I don't want to put any pressure on you because he told me in 2015 and he came up to me before and I was feeling a bit disheartened and I'd only qualified for the Relay I didn't actually qualify didn't actually hit the qualifier Target for worlds um and he said to me you do realize if you swim well you could be like the highest Med learner for GB and I looked at him like are you crazy and it came true so like he was he always knew like never underestimating that he knew exactly what I could do um so that that obviously really helped me in going out towards Tokyo I was so nervous because I had to withdraw a week before Rio and I had an injury going into Tokyo um quite a bad injury and I was really struggling so it was in my head I was like oh my God like what if I have to withdraw again what if I don't get there and I wasn't really excited until we actually landed in Tokyo and then I was like I've made it to Tokyo surely nothing could go wrong now we've got the monkey off your back sort of thing yeah so then I started to get more excited God we were right with the emotional rollercoaster then it really is up and down all the time then because it's not just for the Paralympics it's almost every day with training like it must be immensely fatiguing as well as physically fatiguing as well yeah it's it's quite frustrating with the nature of having a condition like dystonia I can be quite different day to day um that can be amazing on like a Monday when they get to the pool on Friday and I can't clear the water so yeah it's I think it's difficult for the coaches to understand as well especially working with new coaches um because they look at me and they're like what has happened in like two days um so yeah it's it's been frustrating it's been a learning curve um but I think for me as well like it's it's kind of it's kind of shown me that you know so many people have you know certain disabilities will have issues in their life where they kind of put limits on the set off like oh well I'm not going to be able to do this now or you know this is never going to happen or like what's the point in trying and I think I've kind of proven that obviously it took me like five years longer and it looked very different and it was really difficult to get there but obviously I still achieved my goal which was like to be honest I wasn't really caring about medals I just wanted to be able to call myself a problem um and obviously I achieved that so I think for me it was kind of an eye-opener especially to get the word out about dystonia which is why I became patron of Dustin UK which is the only UK best charity um to help people with the condition of dystonia and just to like show others that you know it is still possible yeah I mean there's so many points in the journey that you've told us so far where you you've literally said I wasn't meant to swim again sort of thing and yet you've kept going and it yeah five or six years later at Tokyo you're you're winning Golds it's incredible it's a journey isn't it amazing The Not To Be World Record um I'm gonna take you back to another little bit of a roller coaster in last summer now it caught Armory at the uh the British summer camps in Sheffield where you set an unbelievable world record I think you smashed the mark by over a second if I'm correct but unfortunately because there was no doping control there the world record doesn't stand it's a very odd one in the fact that obviously you're a world-class swimmer you're there you're racing there is a chance that you could set World Records because you've set them in the past and yet because this it's almost an arbitrary thing that wasn't set in place for you it doesn't count what was your reaction to that um to be honest I was really disappointed um at first like it was about a month after the world championships and generally because of my shoulder I struggled to recover after racing so I mean I was into Jordan Tokyo but it took me 20 weeks to get back in order off to Tokyo so I wasn't really expecting to be able to race but luckily we managed to get me back in and I wasn't expecting to know swim quick but the head coach said to me like I want you to move it on from Worlds and at Worlds I broke three World Records so I was like okay so um it was the it was the night the night before it started obviously you've got the technical meeting and one of the Loughborough coaches because I was still based enough but then phoned me and was like if they're not accepting what records and I was like what so I didn't realize that the rule is actually slightly different for the Olympic guys in the paralympic side so Pharrell's in Paris and if you break a world record you don't it's not you that individually has to be tested it's anyone during that meet so if a single person is tested randomly during the competition then it will count whereas for the Olympic side it's the person that breaks the world record that has to be tested so it is quite different and I don't know why it's different um that doesn't make any sense to me like it's like at all but okay yeah so I think like obviously from the able-bodied side all the guys that would be capable of breaking mod records would be at Commonwealth Games so it was only really the parasite where it would be an issue so there were two of us uh myself and Ellie chalice that were potentially gonna break World Records so I know um British Parish women tried really hard to contact them um to try and get someone from you cut down um and when they were advised that they couldn't send anyone because they were too busy with a commonwealth because it was a couple of weeks well not even I think it was about it started about maybe a week or so before the Commonwealth yeah so obviously most of the teams were in the country and they wanted to do like pre-competition testing and you know like the random testing they do so the next option for British women was to contact one of the private so if UK can't come you can then contact a private drug testing company and pay for them to come to the event um so they tried that and again they said oh we can't because we're too busy with the Commonwealth um so then what we tried next is I'm actually on Adams that's a whereabouts so um I get randomly drug tested in and out of competition so we were like well I'm frequently drug tested can we get off that and they were like absolutely not so um we were basically just praying so myself and Ellie Charles are both on Adams so we purposely put our time slots during like out the pool during the races just in case on the odd chance we were randomly tested in case because if it was at the portal then it would have counted um so we were kind of just praying that some drug tester would randomly turn up but unfortunately they didn't which means that the world record doesn't count but it counts as a European record and a British record so the British record is faster than the world record did it take a while for you to get over it well I have actually in fact did how did you get over it I think for me the biggest frustration was I'd been working so well with um Gareth McNary and Loughborough who was the Paralee coach and it was my first sort of a race opposite world but he didn't come so it was the first time where he was there and he could see me break world records and um he also was finishing his career as a swim coach and going to lecturing so I really wanted like that to be under you know the last thing that happens is that his one of his athletes set to what record and then the fact that it doesn't count and I was just like oh so I think I was more frustrated not that he'd think cat is a world record because obviously I'm gonna beat it again hopefully but it was more of a it was the sentiment of like the only time I get to race under under Gareth and uh in in the UK under a British meat and it won't count oh man that's a really selfless attitude actually that's that's amazing and you you say it gives you confidence that you you can smash it again no doubt now I I wasn't really I had I had an injury going into Worlds um which is why I was enough but we worked really well through it and I was kind of wasn't really sure where I'd be at but I'd been we kind of changed things up so we did the opposite of what we did during Tokyo so in the water instead of trying so before Tokyo we we did low level um volume but we just tried to really push the intensity and it just did not work um and it meant that the effects of the steroid rejection I had to get for the injury just didn't work so I was in pain constantly and that made racing really difficult so what we did for the world championships was really low level and low intensity um getting to the maximum I got to was like threshold um not going any quicker than that but just doing really high intensity slightly shorter sessions on the track um and that worked really really well so obviously it gave me confidence at Worlds but I never thought that my times that I did at the Championships that I'd be able to go quicker like I think it was about four or five weeks later and the hundred freestyle the world record that I broke in Sheffield was almost two seconds quicker than what I did at once oh it's ridiculous isn't it it's crazy so when you have like your list of PBS for example that that time must be in like an asterisk because I I've done this time but it doesn't officially count on the world stage like what time do you enter now for like the next Paralympics in like Paris yeah this is really weird I was talking to my current coach about it and because we're entering I've got a winter National meet coming up and then we're doing the Northampton two weeks after and I said to him like what time do I enter and he's like well because it's it still counts even though it's not in technically it's not International level it does count as a PB it just obviously doesn't count as a world record so I'd still into that quick time um but I'm hoping maybe it trials I might be ready to push on and try and try and beat it um that'd be a really easy way to confuse some poor commentator yes when he's when the world records come up but your entry time is faster a bit really easy whatever like what what's going on it's a glitch so what is the target this summer because the wolves are in Manchester Target For World Championships they're in your home country what's the target um to be honest just getting to I think the I obviously want to retain my three titles um so I retain them twice now so I'd really like to do it three times that would be really cool and the Aquatic Center is the pool I've been trying out for the last seven years so it's my home pool um I think for me I've had a bit of a rocky starts this career I kind of thought that after Tokyo I might retire just because of how difficult it's been with my shoulder um and obviously I decided that it just kind of reignited my love for sport I just absolutely love racing and I just don't get to do it much because my shoulder which is kind of why I was falling out of level with the sport a little bit and I was just generally unhappy um but it kind of won I never want to be beaten by the Chinese girl again I don't want anyone to beat me two words and not not be vegan I also want to experience the games in a panda not in a pandemic where there's actually Spectators and there's stuffed in the village and you're not scared about what speaking to anyone in case you become a close contact and get dragged away um so I can't I decided to carry on but obviously that I've still got these ongoing shoulder issues and last season was better until I got the injury um so I decided you know like why didn't I go see a shoulder search and just see exactly what's going on getting more in detailed scan um and I didn't really get the response I was expecting and it was probably it wasn't that long ago it was a couple of months ago um and not even that actually and I was told that I should immediately retire from swimming oh wow so it's kind of made me think about things and basically like the the issues to my shoulder are irreparable like it's just something I've got to live with and he was just basically concerned that if I keep doing High load overhead activities like swimming that by the time I get to 40 years old that I won't be able to self-propel or you know like I won't have much shoulder function there so um it's kind of giving me something to think about and you know originally I was really upset I wasn't expecting to be told that I needed to retire immediately um but you know we've got a really good team Doc and I've been speaking to them speaking to coaches and other athletes and I I don't feel like it's my time I feel that we can manage as well obviously I've got the advantage of cross training and I feel like if we if we manage it well I I think hopefully I can get to Paris and I mean my goal has always been to go to a commonwealth games and as a low-class athlete but they don't put the lower classifications in so the lowest they go is an S6 so unless they happen to be a freestyle event because you can only swim up one category unless there was an S6 freestyle event I don't ever have a chance of competing at one so I was kind of hoping that I could hold on until 2026 just to see in case of the odd chance that there is an S6 women's freestyle event that I could potentially swim up with well let's talk about these Commonwealth Games because yeah you didn't get to Volunteering At Commonwealth Games race this summer which is it's tough because there really isn't enough events for Paris swimming um but you decided to volunteer so what was that like being at the pool when you've got teammates racing was that tough really really tough I mean for me like I'm just a natural racer like I love racing so to be on poolside and watch other person's race but no I can't was was really really tough um so the first two days I actually spent in the courtroom checking athletes in so I didn't have to watch them race okay okay so I think for me like the biggest thing obviously I grew up in Birmingham my whole sporting career started in Birmingham but I wanted to be part of it like it's my home town I wanted to be part of the Commonwealth Games and obviously if I can't do that in an athlete aspect then why not why not volunteer and see what it's about I think a lot of us are guilty of especially me because I've had so many issues especially with shoulders I'm worrying about Fitness and that big meets I'd never actually stopped to think about how much volunteers do and how how much of a necessity they are and I didn't even realize how in an international competition I got given the best role that there is which everyone wants um a field of place role for volunteering but no one gets it like you have to volunteer at least 10 times to get this role and because I'm an athlete they gave it to me straight away without even questioning um but I didn't realize how important that role is and how like actually how difficult it is to fulfill that role I was literally gonna say that the sport literally relies on volunteers otherwise it just wouldn't work at all that you didn't have any judges no time Keepers no nothing on poolside because you know we literally the sports has run by them would you recommend it to others that aren't able to compete to soak up the atmosphere like you did oh definitely it obviously gives you especially for young athletes coming up that haven't been to a big event it will give you the insight into what how loud it is what it looks like how everything's run um I think it's a really big learning curve for other athletes to appreciate how much volunteers do because I think we're all good we have not really knowing or taking the time to actually see how much they do and how much goes into it and it's it's really actually really interesting to see the other side of it and not always just be the athlete before we finish this podcast I'm going to ask you kind of a really tough question if the shoulder doesn't hold up Frame Running / Multi-Sport Para-Athlete is there a future for frame running would you look at doing another sport at the Paralympics so this is interesting because um a couple of years ago when I first started I was trying to get classified in frame running and I just couldn't because um the it was it was covered by cerebral palsy sport which is UK based and CP Israel which is the international version basically cerebral palsy sport um and they headed up all the classifications so they decided that they wanted to get it in the pattern that game so they would swap it over to the IPC in British Athletics well there was a bit of a miscommunication and they were basically no one was classified for about three years no like either side wouldn't classify anyone and it meant that when they applied for it to be included in Paris that the IPC refused to put it in because um there weren't enough people classified so I got really frustrator because there's all these people that do the sport but we can't like we weren't classified because no one would classify us but then they wouldn't put us in the Panama games because they weren't enough of us so that was quite the same thing so we're hoping that obviously because I was hoping to try and be a dual sport athlete at Paris that would have been really cool um but no that's you know hopefully it will get put into La um that's something I want to try but my original plan was actually to do is Triathlon after Paris and see if I could do Triathlon however I bought a handbike um and a charity called the bemore Bailey charge Foundation really kindly helped fund that um and unfortunately I started to try and use it on Roll as well as a Loughborough and I can probably I can cycle to about 1K until I get a lot shoulder pain and the Sprint distance on a triathlon is 20K oh wow that's quite far what that's a that's a Sprint distance oh my God yeah that's the choice the shortest Triathlon has this and it's about 750 meter swim um a 5k push in a racing chair and then a 20K bike so yeah I don't think that's gonna work geez but maybe wheelchair racing we'll see but I think frame running obviously shoulder wise is much better and I'm always going to do it it's something like I can go on dog walks like places in my wheelchair can't get I can just generally use it and my biggest passion at the minute is trying to get young kids into it as early as possible because we have a club in Manchester which is amazing and if I do move I'd really love to set up my own club and Loughborough um but the difference between a young lad in Birmingham um who I fundraised to buy a frame for um he finally got his friend at the age of eight but he'd never walked never had a walker because he can't certain aided so the difference between them and the we've got a couple of four and five-year-olds in our club in Manchester and that early intervention makes such a massive difference and obviously not all these kids are going to be athletes but them being able to go to a sport club experts and everything like everyone else being treated like a normal kid and actually have the benefit of being Physically Active something that they'd never be able to do these kids can't walk and they're pushed around all days they're they're too young to have electric chairs or self-propelled so they're fully relant on everyone and then you get them on a track and they're running laps and I think that is just so important to start at such a young age so that's like the main thing I'm really interested at the minute is trying to get as much awareness for that as possible see more people need that we need more people like you tally more selfless people who just want to help young kids who maybe don't have the the financial backing or the you know they they're not able to get to places it's it's yeah everything like that the credit to everything I think more people need to get to know you tally honestly so thank you very much for coming on a podcast honestly Quick Fire Questions so we do usually finish our podcast with some quick fire questions for our Elite guests do you sound it up for those okay um so what is your favorite event in swimming 100 freestyle uh who is your swimming Idol uh can it be someone who's retired yeah yeah yeah uh it was Jazz Carlton uh what's your proudest moment in swimming uh winning gold in Tokyo but not just because it was a prominent medal because of everything I went through together yeah yeah yes um what's the hardest set you've ever done in training and I'm mindful that your training probably has to be specially written for you and your disability um back in the day when I was at broaden school uh every Monday morning we already did 3 100 freestyle of 115 or 10 400s I am Scott couldn't make that no not a chance um and if you were to go on a road trip there's three spaces in the car you can take friends family or celebrities who would you take with you it's it's completely random question that I think I take one celebrity one member of my family and one friend okay have you got any names in mind for the celebrity uh I Pro I don't know it wouldn't it wouldn't be an athlete I don't think okay okay is that someone call an interesting so many names isn't it it's always a tough one spot Tully thank you so much Send Off for coming on to this week's episode of the propulsion swimming podcast I've thoroughly enjoyed uh learning a lot more about your story this 40 45 minutes has actually just flown by um yeah best of luck with the rest of the season hopefully we see you at the World Championships later on this or next year next year yeah um and yeah hopefully the um the shoulder holds up for you thank you yeah best of luck both in swimming and in frame running as well because it seems like you've got a bit of career in both at the moment so best luck to both of those both of those disciplines and yeah we should definitely keep in touch because it's been great yeah so that just about rounds up this week's episode of the propulsion swimming podcast if you haven't subscribed already please do so on YouTube Apple podcast or Spotify and me and Dan will be back in one week's time yeah thank you for listening everyone and we'll catch you on the next one you've been listening to the propulsion swimming podcast with with Scott and Dan we want to thank you for joining us and invite you to subscribe to the show as well as checking out the propulsion swimming YouTube channel for weekly tutorials and videos to get your swimming fix we will be back next week until then we'll catch you on the next one