Elizabeth Valerie DAVIES

Although Valerie Davies had been part of the relay team that won the European Championships in 1927 she was not chosen for the Amsterdam Olympic Games and instead had to wait until 1930 to participate in another championships. Davies was a one-woman Welsh swimming team at the first British Empire Games in 1930 in Canada and won the nation’s only three medals of the entire Games at freestyle and backstroke. At the Los Angeles Olympic she narrowly defeated compatriot Phyllis Harding to win the bronze medal in the 100 backstroke and added a medal of the same colour in the freestyle relay. Her last major championships was the 1934 British Empire Games in London where she added yet another bronze medal to her collection.