Paris 2024
After enjoying the most successful Olympic and Paralympic Games yet at Tokyo 2020, athletes who train and study at the University of Bath are working hard towards achieving their ambitions at Paris 2024.
The Olympic Games will take place from 26 July to 11 August 2024, followed by the Paralympic Games from 28 August to 8 September 2024.
Selected athletes
Aquatics GB Bath Performance Centre swimmers (above, from left) Tom Dean, Jacob Whittle, Kieran Bird, Leah Crisp and Freya Anderson became the first University of Bath-based athletes to be officially selected for Paris 2024 when they were named in Team GB’s Olympic Games swimming squad on 16th April 2024.
Anderson and Dean head to Paris as Olympic Champions, while freestylers Bird and Whittle are also set for their second Games. Economics and Mathematics student Crisp, supported by a Santander Sporting Scholarship, will make her Olympic debut in the marathon swimming event.
University of Bath Swimming Club‘s Ben Proud was also named in the squad along with Sport & Exercise Science alumna Anna Hopkin. Click here to read the full story.
Setting the standard
Pentathlon GB‘s Olivia Green was the first University of Bath-based athlete to achieve the Paris Olympic qualifying standard when she won women’s individual bronze for Team GB at the 2023 European Games in Poland. Defending Olympic Champion Joe Choong secured another quota spot for Britain when he won silver in the men’s individual competition later that afternoon. Click here to read the full report.
Team-mate Kerenza Bryson then achieved the standard herself by winning women’s individual bronze when the University of Bath hosted the 2023 UIPM Pentathlon World Championships, a qualifying event for the Paris Olympics. Read more about the event here.
Bill Whiteley Sporting Scholar Kate Shortman is set to compete at her second Olympic Games after qualifying for Paris 2024 in the Duet artistic swimming events with partner Izzy Thorpe, their place secured by two historic medals in three days at the 2024 World Aquatic Championships in Doho. Click here for the full story.
Paralympian Suzanna Hext set Paris 2024 nomination times at the 2024 Aquatics GB Swimming Championships in London. Click here for full details.
Marking milestones
To celebrate six months to the Olympic Games, Olympians and Paralympians training at the University were visited by Lucy Frazer MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
She was accompanied on the tour of the Team Bath Sports Training Village (STV) – a UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre – by Dame Katherine Grainger, Chair of UK Sport, and spoke to a number of athletes and coaches including double Tokyo 2020 swimming gold-medallist Tom Dean, reigning modern pentathlon Olympic champions Joe Choong and Kate French, and Paralympic wheelchair fencing champion Piers Gilliver. Click here to read the full story.
To mark six months to the Paralympic Games, we caught up with the world-leading GB wheelchair fencing squad in their custom-built National Training Centre at the Sports Training Village to get an insight into their preparation.
Countdown to the Games
