Laura Stephens’ journey from being DQ’d in her first meet to her second Olympics

With the Paris 2024 Olympic Games around the corner, we’re taking a closer look at some of our aquatics athletes who are representing Team GB in the French capital this summer.

Laura Stephens heads into her second Olympics in Paris on the back of becoming a world champion in February and registering an Olympic consideration time at the Speedo Aquatics GB Championships in April.

She now looks to improve on her efforts in Japan and be in the hunt for her first Olympic podium place.

However, she didn’t always find the butterfly too easy, recalling one of her earliest swimming memories where she was disqualified in her first competition.

She said: “In my first race I was doing a 50m butterfly and I just went for a freestyle turn. It was quick, I’m not going to lie. I did win so I like to think I was, you know, thinking outside the box a little bit, just being creative, but it was outside the rules so that did lead to a DQ.

“I didn’t take it to heart too much because my coaches and parents kept everything so fun when I was younger. I didn’t look at that mistake and think ‘oh gosh’. It was fine. It was just a mistake and you move on.

“I obviously did learn how to do a proper fly term pretty quickly after that though!”

‘They’ve been so supportive’

It was that love of competing that really helped Stephens fall in love with the sport as she shared her experiences and support of her first clubs.

“As soon as I started racing really when I was nine and ten, that was when I kind of realised I had a bit of a flare for butterfly and the more 50m butterflies that I won, the more I started to enjoy the sport.

“I started swimming at Harwich Swimming Club when I was I think seven or eight years old with my older sister Emily.

“I was kind of following in her footsteps because she’d learnt to swim and joined the club as well. So we’d train there together three times a week at the very start. And then from there I moved on to Colchester Swimming Club, so that’s both of my home clubs in Essex.

“They’ve both been so supportive. I’ve been back to both and done swim clinics and Colchester have followed me the whole way through from when I was training there and I started to get my first county medals and actually when I was just about to leave Colchester, that’s when I had my first international appearance.

“So it really did all begin there with them. I’m really grateful for all the support they’ve continued to show me for the past, well 10 years now.”

In the chase for the medals

Stephens then went on to join Plymouth Leander, who guided her to senior international level and to her debut Olympics in Tokyo.

She narrowly missed out on a place in the Women’s 200m Butterfly final in Japan but is hoping to ‘rectify her disappointment’ with a good performance at the ‘La Defense Arena’.

“It’s my second games now and I had a bit of a disappointment in Tokyo when I missed out on the final.

“So I’m hoping to rectify that at this games and I’d really like to be in the final and in the chase for one of those medals.

“I feel like I’m a lot more experienced coming into Paris. I know kind of what I’ve got facing me.

“It’s really nice to have that experience that I have been able to learn from with all the other major competitions, world and European championships that I’ve been to.

“It’s all now kind of like information that I’ve stored and I can use going into this Olympics.”