Britain's Black swimmer Alice Dearing on the ripple effect of her Olympic status
The Tokyo 2020 Olympian speaks exclusively to Olympics.com about the balance of being an elite athlete aiming for Paris 2024 and using her platform to help increase diversity in her beloved sport via the Black Swimming Association.
Marathon Swimming
The reaction to two different questions prompted the same immediate response from swimmer Alice Dearing when she spoke exclusively to Olympics.com in early December.
The Brit grinned broadly, eyes sparkling, first when asked how it felt to be an Olympian and then on being asked to describe the impact of the Black Swimming Association (BSA), which she co-founded and that was announced on Wednesday (14 December) as the UK National's Lottery's Project of the Year for 2022.
On the latter, the 25-year-old Birmingham native noted how the charity, which advocates for diversity in aquatics, has already progressed two members from non-swimmers to coaches, despite only being set up in 2020.
On the former, Dearing experienced the holy grail of competing at an Olympic Games, becoming the first black British female swimmer to do so, coming 19th in the marathon discipline at Tokyo 2020.
Swimming is everything to Dearing and she is passionate not only about the opportunities the sport has opened up for her but also sharing with others – particularly those of different ethnicities less likely to engage in swimming – the joys of the sport, not only as a life skill but a basis for other sports, recovery or even just for fun.
Becoming an Olympian has given Dearing a bigger platform, and she’s using it.
Alice Dearing: Olympic dream, from Tokyo 2020 to Paris 2024
Dearing first learned to swim aged four or five. An early memory is looking aghast to her mum when her buoyancy aids were removed for the first time.
“I remember the teacher coming over, wading through the water and took them off my arms and I remember looking at my mum like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, it's happening, I'm without armbands for the first time’. I could see she was really proud and excited for me but I was terrified.”
Dearing’s progression then stalled due to a fear of doing a pencil jump – straight body, feet first – into the pool. Once again her mum, who is from Accra in Ghana, came to the rescue, taking her daughter to a public swimming session, getting in the water and telling her daughter to jump in. Dearing junior did just that, practiced again and again, before heading with more confidence to her next session.
The first Olympics she watched was Beijing 2008 but actually competing at one wasn’t on Dearing’s radar.
“I was already quite heavily involved in competitive swimming by this point and I was like, 'Oh, that's really cool, but I probably will never get there because I just don't think I've got the dedication in me... but I guess I proved myself wrong, which I think is really cool to be able to do that.”
Junior world champion by 2016, Dearing was disappointed with her Olympic debut, struggling with the warm-water conditions in Odaiba Bay. Nevertheless, Dearing is now just grateful that the Games went ahead at all having been postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that she had an opportunity to race and become an Olympian.
“The experience was absolutely amazing, getting to meet such a mix of people. Meeting some of my team-mates at Loughborough Uni who swim for other countries, it's kind of weird you just all end up being in the same place at the same time – obviously it's the Olympics, that's what happens – but the environment and the atmosphere around it, is just incredible.”
Seeing members of Kenya’s team playing music and dancing on the flag-lined road in the athletes’ village was “such a vibe”, too.
Nevertheless, Dearing has unfinished business and is eyeing Paris 2024 in 19 months’ time. The pathway to hopefully her second Games includes two FINA World Championships that double as qualifying events: in Fukuoka, Japan in August 2023, in which the top three in the women's and men's events qualify a quota place for their nation, but more realistically for Dearing, the 2024 edition in Doha, Qatar in February will be the one from which Dearing hopes to progress.
Alice Dearing: Home-town tragedy
Despite leaning more toward her training regime as she heads toward Paris, Dearing continues to work on her other great love, the BSA. Co-founded with Danielle Obe, Ed Accura and Seren Jones, the importance of their work was particularly acute the day Olympics.com spoke to Dearing.
On Monday 12 December, it was announced that three children had died in the UK after falling into the water while playing on an icy lake. The incident happened in Birmingham, the town where Dearing grew up and where the Commonwealth Games was hosted in July. The tragedy highlighted the importance of the charity, not just in teaching swimming as a life skill but the safety issues around water before even stepping into it.
“We really want to get into schools. We want to be speaking to everybody, and it's not just about getting kids in the water. I want everyone to learn to swim, that is one of our fundamentals, but we need people to know basic water safety – that happens on land and it starts on land.
“The majority of people who drown don't intend to enter the water, so whatever happens begins on land and if we can get that knowledge out to people, to children, to parents, to everybody, hopefully [to prevent] situations like this, which are so tragic.
“I'm from Birmingham myself, so it's like my home ground and to know that a situation like this has occurred is really devastating and we want to prevent this basically, we want these to be very few and far between issues.”
Official participation figures from Sport England show that among African, Caribbean, and Asian communities 95% of black adults, 80% of black children, 93% of Asian adults, and 78% Asian children do not swim in England. And, according to the World Health Organisation, the risk of drowning is higher amongst minority ethnic communities.
The BSA works with these communities to promote water safety, drowning prevention and the benefits of aquatics through water familiarisation.
Dearing’s main role is “just singing about the BSA wherever I get the opportunity, like interviews, media, all that stuff, just shouting about us and whoever hears, great, hopefully people are listening and people are like dialled into it but just using those opportunities is what my main role is at the moment.”
Alice Dearing: Visibility matters
To that end Dearing has graced magazines such as Vogue and Wonderland, and appeared on a Nike-hosted Future Forward panel in London with British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith and NFL player Colin Kaepernick, speaking about their experiences as Black athletes in sport and how they can make the world a better place for those coming after them.
“It's not always easy and it is challenging, it's emotional, it can be draining but I just I know it's worth it because I don't want to finish my career one day and look back on swimming and look back on everything I've done and think, 'Oh, I probably could have tried a bit harder to make it a better place for people'.
“I had an amazing, amazing experience growing up. I did face some racism and discrimination, but it was never anything which put me off the sport but I know there are some instances where people have faced that and it has put them off the sport and that shouldn't be happening and if I can use my voice in any way to help prevent that or help educate and encourage, then I'm going to do it.”
Dearing's crossover into more mainstream media can only help the visibility of Black people in swimming, no matter the reason. Social media posts such as the diverse England men’s football team in the swimming pool – both playing and for recovery – at high-profile events such as the World Cup, can only help persuade those reluctant to get in the water that swimming is for them.
“I didn't know about the picture from the England football team but I absolutely love that – it shows the depths that they go through as athletes. You know, whilst they're amazing footballers, they will have skills elsewhere in life that has helped them access their potential in football. And it's amazing**.** Hopefully, younger kids will look at that and maybe think, 'Oh, maybe I should go get my swimming lessons or maybe I should take part in my swimming lessons at school' or whatever. So it's really nice to see it get coverage through a non-swimming channel because that that's always such a bonus.”
“My life has been amazing because of swimming,” said Dearing. “I've been given those opportunities and I've pursued them, but they would not have come about if it wasn't for swimming and it wasn't for the level of swimming that I got to or the stuff that I'm doing with the BSA and trying to encourage more people into it.
“Swimming doesn't have to be go to the Olympics and swim for your country. It can just be as simple as I really want to learn to swim because I want to teach my daughter how to swim one day and if she looks at me not being able to swim, then how will she understand that situation. Or I just want to learn to swim because I want to go in the pool on holiday. It can be that simple and that's absolutely fine.”