Five-time Olympic swimmer Mark Foster and former Director of Sport Ged Roddy have become the first inductees of 2017 into the University of Bath Hall of Fame for Sport. Foster won 51 major international medals – including six World titles and two Commonwealth Games gold medals – during an illustrious swimming career that lasted 23 years. While at Bath, Foster pioneered the kind of land-training that today’s swimmers take for granted. Roddy’s pioneering spell as...
Outstanding success at the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games plus the visit of sporting and actual royalty ensured that the University of Bath’s 50th anniversary was celebrated in fitting style during 2016. When the University received Royal Charter status on October 25, 1966, there were no sporting facilities on the Claverton Down campus. Five decades later, it has developed into what Director of Sport Stephen Baddeley believes is “the most vibrant, exciting and dynamic sporting...
University of Bath-based swimmers won a terrific 23 medals – 13 of them gold – during four fantastic days of short-course competition at the 2016 ASA National Winter Meet. Leading the way at Ponds Forge, Sheffield, with five titles was Sports Performance graduate Calum Jarvis (pictured left) who struck gold in the 100m butterfly (51.34), 100m freestyle (47.91) and 200m freestyle (1:44.96). He also teamed up with Joseph Hulme, Charlie Attwood and Jay Lelliott to take...
Rio Olympic Games swimmer Andrew Willis returned to the pool in style on Thursday (Dec. 8), winning Great Britain's second medal of the World Championships (25m) with silver in the 200m breaststroke. University of Bath-based Willis, a Chemical Engineering graduate, showed his consistency to improve from heat to final and set a new personal best time of 2:02.71. He was beaten to the touch by Marco Koch (Germany) who won the gold. Mikhail Dorinov (Russia)...
Rio Olympic Games medallists Siobhan-Marie O'Connor, Heather Stanning and Helen Glover each picked up honours at the Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards 2016 on Thursday evening. University of Bath-based swimmer O'Connor, a long-standing member of the hugely-successful British Swimming National Centre at the Sports Training Village, won Young Sportswoman of the Year after her outstanding silver medal in the 200m individual medley in Brazil. In doing so, Bath-born O'Connor broke her own British...
The depth of talent among student athletes at the University of Bath has been demonstrated once again after 22 potential stars of the future were awarded sporting scholarships for the 2016-17 academic year. Competing in sports as diverse as alpine skiing, clay pigeon shooting, modern pentathlon and rowing, all have demonstrated their potential to succeed both academically and on the national and international sporting stage. Among those selected are Team Bath Netball and England U21...
Andrew Willis returns to the international stage for the first time since the Rio 2016 Olympic Games this week when he represents British Swimming at the FINA World Short-Course Championships in Canada. The University of Bath Chemical Engineering graduate, part of the highly-successful British Swimming National Centre at the Sports Training Village, will compete in the 200m breaststroke on Thursday (December 8). Willis – who missed out on a medal in Rio by just eight-hundredths...
University of Bath Head Swimming Coach Mark Skimming scaled new heights to raise £7,500 for Bristol Children’s Hospital by trekking 3,000m to Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Mark took on the 12-day challenge to thank the doctors and nurses that saved the life of his young son. Now an active three-year-old, Albert was born 13 weeks early and spent his first three months in intensive care after been diagnosed with chronic lung disease. Mark described...
Two new championship records, one national record and ten medals in total, three of which were gold, added up to a successful weekend for University of Bath students at the 2016 BUCS Short Course Championships in Sheffield. Sports & Exercise Science student Anna Hopkin excelled in the freestyle events, winning a brace of golds as she set new BUCS [British Universities & Colleges Sport] records of 24.54 over 50m and 53.53 over 100m. That made...
Olympic medallists Heather Stanning, Helen Glover and Siobhan-Marie O’Connor have all been shortlisted in the Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year awards for 2016. Sports Technology graduate Stanning and women’s pair partner Glover, who both learnt to row at the University of Bath with the GB Rowing Team Start programme, are in contention for both Vitality Team of the Year and Olympian of the Year. They made history once again this summer as they became...
