Olympic champion Freya Anderson determined to show she deserves her time in limelight

Nearly a year after returning from Tokyo with a gold medal, the former Ellesmere College swimmer is not yet at peace with the achievement or ready to embrace the royal recognition which followed.

The circumstances are key: Anderson was not part of the GB quartet which won the 4x100 metre medley relay final but received a medal, after the official ceremony, for the part she played in getting the team through the heats.

That was also enough to see her included, along with the rest of the relay squad, on the New Year's honours list.

“I have still not come to terms with it,” she says. “It still doesn’t feel like I should have got all those rewards from it because I didn’t swim in the final.

“I would never look down on anyone else in the same situation as me. But for me, I suppose it is a bit of imposter syndrome.

“I guess it has spurred me on to want to be in that spot and not watching the race that I should be in. It is a mixed bag of emotions. It feels like I don’t deserve it. But I would never say the same about someone else. So maybe I need to think differently about myself.”

It is a brutally honest assessment and one which feels more than a little harsh. And yet it also provides an insight into the psychology of a swimmer who has already enjoyed plenty of success but is still searching for the big individual performance on a world stage to underline her talent.

Perhaps Birmingham 2022 will prove Anderson’s moment. The 21-year-old will be among Team England’s busiest athletes during the six days of competition at Sandwell Aquatics Centre, as she considers adding the 400m freestyle to the 100m and 200m, together with a collection of relay events.

“It is going to be a busy week,” she smiles. “I’m entered for the 400m, as things stand, but that is on the last day, so we will see how things go. At the moment it is a bit up in the air.

“There are a lot relays, roughly one a day. But it is not certain I will swim all of them. One of the good things is there are no heats for the women’s relays, so that will at least give me a chance to ease the workload.”

The latter has been intense of late, with the world championships at the start of July and the Europeans to follow barely a week after the competition in Sandwell concludes.

Yet Anderson, speaking as she prepared to move to the Team England training venue at the University of Birmingham, cuts a relaxed figure.

It may have something to do with recently rediscovering a childhood love for art, even though that has its own stresses.

“I’m a bit of a perfectionist,” she explains, when discussing her hobby for still life drawing. “But it is something to do, something which helps take your mind off swimming for a while.”

More likely, her upbeat mood is due to a season which has, unlike those before it, been free of injury and illness.

Her performance at the worlds, in which she recorded a lifetime best in the 200m freestyle before finishing an agonising fourth in the final, is rated as no more than “OK” but she is approaching the Commonwealths with a quiet determination.

“I am more confident now, definitely,” she says. “I’ve had a very good block of training, from January onwards.

“Some of the times I was doing in training in March and April I was surprising myself. Hopefully now I can transfer that to the race pool.”

The Games brings the added motivation of competing in front of a home crowd and for Anderson, who won two bronze medals on the Gold Coast four years ago, it is the first time many of her family will have watched her race in person since before the pandemic.

“They had to watch me on the TV at the Olympics,” she says. “There is going to be a big crowd cheering us on.

“The fact it is going to be on the BBC, the main channel, in the evenings, is really good for swimming. The sport doesn’t get a huge amount of media coverage outside the Olympics and it is a chance for everyone to boost their profile and show what they can do.

“I’m excited. It is overwhelming how much racing we are doing at the moment but this is what we train for and racing is one of the better parts of being a swimmer. I am just very lucky to have so many competitions.

“This is the fun part of it. There are things I can improve on. I know I can go faster. It is just a case of trying to get that performance out at the right time. If that could be at Birmingham, it would be lovely.”