Gemma Spofforth has one of the busiest schedules around for a 22 year old. She already holds a world record in the 100m backstroke and placed fourth in the event at the Beijing Olympics. She recently won two gold medals and a silver at the European Swimming Championships, and next month she is off to India for her first Commonwealth Games.
As if that’s not enough to keep her busy, in December she will graduate from the University of Florida with a degree in Family, Youth and Community Sciences, which she puts to use in her spare time (whenever that might be) by volunteering at a suicide hotline.
“Right now I’m in London,” she says as she begins to explain her schedule. “I’ll go back to Florida once my visa comes through. Then I’ll train there for two months and then come back to India for the Commonwealths, go back out to Florida to finish school, graduate in December then come home for Christmas.”
Since she moved out to Florida to pursue her degree and continue her swimming career, she rarely gets the chance to spend time in her native West Sussex. “I come home probably two or three times a year either just for competitions or getting ready for meets and then Christmas. I’ve been out in America for four and a half years and the team is literally like my family and the coaches are so supportive of me. Right now I’m almost homesick for America. It’s one of those things that the team is really such a family dynamic that it makes me feel at home.”
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Getting started
Spofforth, who is a commanding 6ft 1in tall, took up swimming when she was three. Her mum, Lesley who died in 2007 to cancer, put her in the five year old age group since she looked tall enough.
“My mom would go to every practice with me and sit and watch me. When I didn’t want to go she would still make me go. I trained in Portsmouth for my teenage years and that was 45 minutes away from home, so they would take me in the morning, then my mom would come back and pick my brother up and then take him to school. So there’s so much dedication behind my swimming from my parents so I can’t really thank them enough.
“If I am really low or if I’m tired, one of the biggest things that motivates me is knowing that my mom battled cancer for four years and to be able to do that and be as upbeat and positive as she was, it’s very easy for me to say it’s a bad session, but she battled cancer, so it’s not as bad as what she went through. That always helps me pick myself up and say there’s more fight in you.”
Top of the world
Spofforth’s competitive career didn’t start until she was about eight years of age. At 13 she won Nationals and from there she knew that she was going to do great things in the pool. Now the next major appointment in her diary is the Commonwealth Games in India which begin at the start of October. She’ll be going for gold in the 100 and 200m backstroke with the possibility of forming part of Team GB’s 400 medley relay. Her place on the team is riding on her performance in the 100m at the Games.
“There’s two of us who are very, very close. Elizabeth Simmonds and I are very close in time and our rivalry is huge. The 100m backstroke is always first, so it depends on who wins that as to who will be in the relay.”
Other than being challenged by her teammates, she also has to fend off top swimmers from around the world, with Australia being one of her biggest competitors. Emily Seebohm from Adelaide currently holds the number one time in the world at the 100m backstroke.
Post Commonwealth Games, Spofforth has her eyes set on the European Championships which take place in June in Berlin. She has an exotic form of motivation to touch in first at the championships. “One of my friends is a pilot,” she says, “and I’ve landed his plane with him probably five times now, and he told me if I got a gold medal at Europeans he’d take me to the Bahamas.”
However, her major passion is making it to London 2012. She has set her career around the 2012 Olympic Games, and believes she is a top competitor for a medal. Yet refuses to let her success be measured by medals.
“I’ve always said 2012 is my goal but at the end of the day I’m not going to put all my eggs in one basket. So, I’m not going to say if I don’t win a gold medal then it’s the end of the world because I enjoy the process. I enjoy training, I enjoy swimming, I enjoy the people who are around me day in and day out. I’m definitely on track to do something great but at the end of the day if I don’t, it’s not going to be the end of the world.”
Caitlin Ritchie, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
