Determined Adlington Sets Her Sights on the Next Three Years

It is half past five on Christmas Eve morning and Rebecca Adlington is scraping the ice off her car windscreen, her cold breath caught in the street lights that illuminate an otherwise pitch black Nottingham sky.

She has almost slipped over on to her backside once already on the sheet ice that has formed on her drive at home, such is the severity of the cold snap that has hit the East Midlands, and at such an ungodly hour only milkmen driving their floats and seasonal revellers returning to their warm beds can be seen out on the streets.

And famous swimmers hell bent on a mission.

“I’m always going to remember 2009,” she promises, as she gets into her car and heads off for a two-hour slog in the pool at the Beechdale Centre on the outskirts of the city. “I’ll always recall how it felt not to perform. I’ll never allow myself to forget those feelings. And I’m never going to let it happen again.”

Adlington burst in to the national conscience by, seemingly from nowhere, winning two Olympic gold medals last year in the 400 and 800 metres freestyle, the latter with a time that shattered the existing 19-year world record. She was just 19 years old.

Overnight she became a household name, collecting awards, appearing on shows, and touching the nation’s heart with her girl-next-door demeanour, her absurd fear of the sea and her love of all things Jimmy Choo.

But there would be a price to pay for a young girl who required total commitment to stay at the summit of the high peak she had just climbed, and it came at the world championships in Rome last august where she could only finish third in the 400 metres, and fourth in her best event, the 800 metres, a race which ended with the girl from Mansfield in tears.

In the cold of a late December morning she realises it was not all bad. “I produced a personal best in the 400 metres, which you can’t ask for much more, and I also won a bronze in the 4 x 200 metres relay, so the worlds weren’t a total disaster,” she says later once her morning session was over and she sat in the café with hair still wet.

Then there was the dreaded swimsuit issue, in which Adlington chose to stay with her sponsors, Speedo, and their LZR suit, whilst all of her main rivals went for the more buoyant, faster and therefore advantageous suits developed by other swimwear firms now outlawed as from January 1^st, 2010. “Well, we’ll never know whether that made a difference or not, will we?” she says. “But what I do know is that I swam the 800 metres three seconds slower than I had the previous year, that I felt awful from halfway onwards in that race, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

“It’s taken me time to work it all out. September to December is a crucial time in the year for a swimmer because that’s where all the engine work is done in the pool. I spent a fair bit of that time last year enjoying the post-Beijing euphoria, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything. After all, you never know what might happen in the future. That might have been my last Olympics – although that’s not the plan - so it would have been a dreadful shame not to have enjoyed it all.

“But something had to give. This, and other factors such as moving out of the family house and into a Nottingham flat, all played their part in meaning I hadn’t done the hard yards and I got found out in Rome. I have learnt so much more out of losing in 2009 than winning in 2008.”

If Beijing was a surprise to the British sporting public, this was nothing compared to Adlington. “Even now I look back and say to myself: “I can’t believe I actually did that. Was that really me?” Beijing was only supposed to be an experience, a stepping stone for London 2012. It was part of the journey, not the destination. My goals, even when I was out there, were to make the 400 final and possibly squeeze out a medal in the 800 metres. If I had achieved that I would have come home very happy. You have to remember, I’d never won anything meaningful before.”

It was one hell of a way to get off the mark, but it also disguised her inexperience at the highest level that had previously seen her fail to make the 2006 England Commonwealth Games team, and flop dismally at the 2007 world championships. Rome was a marked improvement on that, but still a letdown after the highs of Beijing.

“I can’t blame anyone else but myself,” Adlington admits. “I let myself down. It’s a horrible finishing fourth in a major final but the big positive is how much it hurt, and how much it still hurts. That’s all fuel for the future.

“If I didn’t think I could improve I’d retire today. Quite a few of my friends expected me to quit straight after Beijing in any case. “How do you follow that?” they asked me. “How do you carry on when you’ve already reached the complete pinnacle of your career?”

“I’ve thought about this quite a lot and the answer is simple. I love what I do. It’s been hard, and maybe 2009 is also a response to eight, solid years completing ten, two-hour sessions per week, every week since the age of 12. I’ve turned 20 and I can feel it in my body.

“People laugh when I explain this to them. They point out that I am still so very young. But my point is that my body has been through the mangle, and it’s changed as I’ve grown older. I’m also a big girl, and it all takes its toll. Now I believe my body will stop changing for a good few years and this means Bill (Furniss, her coach) and I can develop the correct training programme. I’m doing more gym work than I did before, and I’ve had a good autumn and early winter in the pool.”

The most telling factor, as Adlington plans for a 2010 dominated by the European Championships in Budapest in August, and the Commonwealth Games in Delhi two months later, is her own drive to ensure Beijing was not an extraordinary one-off.

“I don’t want to be a one-hit wonder,” she says. “Beijing may turn out to be the best week of my entire life, but I’d hate to think that everything went downhill from the age of 19.

“There’s so much more to win, starting with the Europeans and Commonwealths, and then the 2011 worlds. I’m not naïve to say I’m going to win them all. Look at Michael Phelps this year. Nobody wins everything. But the best win the races that really count. If 2010 and 2011 merely serve to be stepping stones to more Olympic success in London then I’ll take it right now.

“Whatever happens, I’m going to make sure, win or lose, that I’ve given it my best shot. I never want that feeling again of knowing I’ve let myself down as I did in 2009.”

Adlington is forced to take today off, as indeed she was on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but only because the council-run pools are all closed for the festive holiday.

But she will be back scraping the ice off her car windscreen early tomorrow morning before another two-hour session in the pool, two hours which she hopes will bring her closer to proving she is indeed no one-hit wonder.