Anna Hopkin: Chorley Olympic gold medal winner awarded her MBE by Princess Anne

Anna Hopkin, 26, who now lives in Loughborough, obtained her award earlier this month when she was offered with the distinguished title for providers to swimming. She has swum her solution to successful quite a few medals corresponding to competing for England within the girls’s 4×100m freestyle relay on the 2018 Commonwealth Games the place she received a bronze medal. In May 2021, she received gold medals in girls’s 4 × 100m freestyle, girls’s 4 × 100m particular person medley, 4 × 100m combined freestyle and 4 × 100m combined on the European Championships in Budapest -Layered relays. She was nominated to be a member of the British crew for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She then swam the Anchor Freestyle within the 4 x 100m combined medley relay and received gold with Adam Peaty, James Guy and Kathleen Dawson in a brand new world report time of three minutes 37.58 seconds.

She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for providers to swimming within the New Year Honors 2022 however solely just lately obtained it as a result of Covid delays. Her MBE medal was offered by HRH Princess Anne at Windsor Castle on Monday November 7, who described her as “crazy” and one thing she “never thought would happen to her”.

She stated: “It all felt a little bit crazy as I never thought I would have an MBE. When I received it a year after the Olympics, it makes you reflect on what you have achieved. I love swimming and am very close to him you all spend so much time together and go through a lot of ups and downs.

“I started competing when I was eight and then I took a pretty long break from 13 to 17 to try other sports because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed just as a swimmer.

“When I used to be youthful I used to be a fly swimmer, 100, 200 flies, then once I began competing once more I knew I could not actually do the longer distances and caught to 50 flies and by the time I went to school, she received me into the relays doing the 50 free and I type of realized I used to be higher at that and it was a pure development to coach as much as the 100. I spotted that I used to be extra of a freestyler than a flyer. I feel I’ve already completed quite a bit with relays, so I’d wish to be extra profitable as a person and ultimately tackle a mentoring function to stability a way of life with coaching.

Although her coaching plan of 9 swimming periods, three health periods and Pilates in a single week would not go away a lot time for the rest, she likes to bake in each free minute. Her subsequent occasion is the World Short Course Championships December 13-18 in Melbourne, Australia, which she is going to go away subsequent week.

Anna, whose first swim membership was Chorley Marlins, added: “I’ll be out there for the next few months so I’ll be celebrating Christmas and the New Year on the beach.”