THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

It’s cold, miserable and snowy outside so I thought now is the best time to FINALLY get around to writing my post-Olympic blog! Plus… I think it’s only fair you get a sneaky peek at some of the pictures I took while I was at the Games.

The Olympic Games from 28^th July to 13^th August were the best two weeks of my life so far and I don’t think anything will come close to topping that for a long while…

Day one, 28^th July 2012 was RACE DAY, and I can proudly and happily say I finished 11^th place in the 400 Individual Medley. And for those that know my dad Stuart used to swim, I finished higher ranked than he did so now I’m the pro in the Willmott household! J The whole experience is one I will never forget and I hope to only add to with future competitions. The craziest thing when I think about it properly (even though it sometimes seems all too good to have happened to me) was the noise of the crowd right before I swam; the entire stadium was cheering and waving flags and that memory is one that will always be extra special and personal to me, as no one else knows how or will be able to understand how I felt right at that moment. Hannah Miley a fellow GB swimmer was racing in the heat before me and swam brilliant and the buzz from Hannah, and the crowd, carried me down the first length of my race without even thinking about what to do or where I was. Unfortunately my experience of competing at the Olympics only lasted for 4.38.4 seconds and I can only imagine what it would have been like to compete in a Final at London 2012. Because my event is pretty tough there is no semi-final for it, meaning I missed out, as 11^th place in most other events would have guaranteed a second swim and that once in a life time experience to walk out to my name in front of a home crowd. I can always dream, but hey I can’t complain as I was lucky to have a Home Olympics fall at a perfect time in my lifetime. Most don’t get the opportunity so that’s one I can say I have had and be thankful for.

Myself and Ellie Faulkner 

After my competing had finished the games just got better and better as I became head cheerleader. I was the first GB swimmer and probably one of the first athletes from the entire GB Team to finish competing so I took up the role to make sure I was there every session cheering as loud as I could for the rest of the team, I know if I was still competing they would be there for me. My voice slowly disappeared and every time the doctor told me to stop shouting somebody racing would be so close to a best time or a medal I just couldn't help but join in with the cheering. (Well I tried to but literally I couldn't speak, haha) For the next two weeks after the Olympics I managed just about managed to croak my way through my sentences, so I’d say that was some dedication on my behalf to the team!

I know there were lots of negative comments from the Media about how unsuccessful the swim team ‘apparently’ were but I’d like to see those people who don’t have anything positive to say give it a go. It isn’t exactly easy, because if it was everybody would have an Olympic medal and they don’t. When Becky and Michael were racing I don’t think any one of OUR team could say they were disappointed of them. Yes, swimming may be an individual sport, but without a team we wouldn't all be as successful as we are; we know how much hard work and dedication it takes to reach the top which obviously they don’t. We all work harder than most and for little reward compared to likes of footballers and ‘professional sportsmen’ to even get a taste of achieving that dream of being stood on an Olympic Podium.

Just chilling with the London 2012 mascot

Me stood under the Olympic Rings in the Village

Before we went to London we travelled to Edinburgh to train as a team for a few days before the games started. While we were there we had a lovely formal meal where we all had to wear our provided evening wear. It was strange seeing so many people all wearing the same clothes but it was lovely way to spend some time not thinking about the pressure of the competition ahead and to just enjoy it. Roberto Pavoni who is in the picture with me below is one of my best friends from the team. We have competed in every competition together bar the world championships in pretty much the same events so when we both qualified it was the next best thing to me making the team myself.

Poster for Open water cheering -
 Design and making by myself and Pavoni!
Modeled by me and Fran 

After the swimming and the open water events were over I was lucky enough to see some other events. I got tickets for Water polo, the pairs Synchronised swimming, Diving and BMXing. The BMXing was probably my favourite event to watch as I've never watched something like that before. I didn’t realise how fast they whiz around a circuit on a bike, if that was me I guarantee I’d have been off my bike and on my bum after the first jump. The venue was pretty impressive but I guess they all were at the Games; I didn’t hear a single complaint. I was lucky enough to see Tom Daley win his medal on the 10m Platform dive and that was unbelievable to watch. It was sooooo close until the last few dives and by the reaction from his team you could tell that he was chuffed with it. The HUGE bonus for me (and if you know me you will already know) Is I LOVE David Beckham, and I could NOT BELIEVE I was in the same building as him when Tom was diving. If I’d have been able to properly meet him I think I’d have been the happiest person alive at that moment in time, but not many people can say that they’ve seen his head poking out the top of a crowd… but I can!!!!

OLYMPIC PARK

The Olympic park itself was beautiful. To get to it from the village was a little hop over a bridge, through security, and it was as simple as that. I tried to get into the Park as much as I could when I wasn't busy as the atmosphere was amazing to be in. So many people dressed up in union jack fancy dress (including my family I must admit) watching the huge screens in the park cheering and having a good time. During the two weeks of the Olympics I would say London was probably the best place to be and if you didn't get tickets or manage to watch on the TV you definitely missed out.

My best friend & sister after i had raced..

I wasn’t lucky enough to get tickets to watch any of the athletics and I really, really, really wanted to. Even though I didn’t get inside the stadium when the competing was on you could hear what was going on from the Village. I remember walking back from the food hall when Mo won his second Gold medal and the entire stadium roared so loudly that we all knew a Team GB athlete had won something. When the National anthem was echoing from the stadium I had goosebumps, you just don’t hear things like that every day.

What most people didn’t get to do was hold a REAL OLYMPIC LONDON 2012 GOLD MEDAL but I did, it was Peter Wilsons shooting GOLD Medal. I’d met him a few days before competing and I watched his event on the TV in the room and all I remember was jumping up and yelling to my roommates, “WOOOO we've won another Gold!” I shared a room with Ellie Faulkner who swam the 800freestlye and the 4x200 relay and we also shared a mini apartment with Hannah Miley, Rebecca Turner, and Steph Proud. I loved sharing with these girls as we had so much fun and luckily we had one of the best rooms as ours had two floors!!

Me, Peter and his Gold medal!

My room mates 'Left to Right'
 Rebecca, me, Steph, Ellie, Hannah!

THE CLOSING CEREMONY WAS AMAZZINGGGG!!!!
I went to the closing ceremony at the Commonwealth games in Delhi but the London 2012 closing ceremony was one million times better! Because my race was on day one of the Olympics I didn't get to go to the Opening ceremony but the closing one made up for it… Not only did I manage to sneak on Tv walking at the front of Team GB on the way to the stadium I had a good view when I was inside and met some lovely people. Seeing the Spice Girls on stage was probably the best bit for me. I used to pretend I was sporty spice when I was younger as I was a massive Spice Girl’s fan, so I guess seeing them live was pretty cool. Afterwards the whole of Team GB had a little after party with some of the athletes DJ’ing and I didn't sleep all night as me and a few of the other swimmers were having so much fun with everybody, making new friends and chatting about the entire experience… why would you want to sleep?!?! The only downside to that meant traveling home extremely tired, and no surprise for me my train decided to break down, so I had to haul all of my luggage, bare in mind I had the three biggest suitcases possible and a rucksack, off of one train and onto other!

It’s true what they say about the Olympic blues. I didn't think it would be to upset once I got home and had seen my family but I was, I missed it so much and I still wish I could go back now; eat as much food as I possibly could from all over the world in the food hall, chilling with all my friends, and having an awesome time making memories I’ll never forget, but I guess I can’t.

So I hope you enjoyed this sneaky peek into my Olympic Games… If I tried to tell you everything that went on you would be here all day!

OHH and I almost forgot. I have to say how amazing the Games Makers were! Without them I’d have got lost many a time and London 2012 wouldn’t have been the same J  

Hey everyone!  My trip to Sheffield last weekend was very successful for those who'd like to know! I swam only 1 second slower than my personal best time in the final and had my faster ever heat swim so things went exactly to plan! :) I've got a little bit more confidence from it too; the theory is if I swam that well un rested I can only hope I'm going to be even faster once I'm ready to go on race day! Not long now :) I'm currently up in Scotland at the moment doing some Long Course training in and around the Stirling ITC guys, and so far so good. I had a tough set of 50s max yesterday morning and some threshold work last night, and I'd been in the gym so I woke up this morning feeling very sore! (but luckily the physio was on hand to help)  The worst place to have massaged I find is my legs, there's nothing worse than having sore legs and having muscle release done around your knee caps! ouchh! But apart from the muscles not holding up to well, I'm having a pretty solid start to the week!  On the flip side last weekend I got all my Olympic Games kit and It.. is.. amazing!!!!   I was like a child on Christmas day when I walked through the doors and saw it all I was that excited...  The best thing was, the entire kitting out area looked like either an Adidas shop, or a actual NEXT shop which i think made the whole experience really cool; We even had our own assistant to. Each item was hung on a rack in each different size for us to try on and then our 'personal shopper' had to mark down which size fit, and to make things even better somebody else hung it back on the hanger for the next person to try on. So we basically did nothing all day other than be looked after and then we got to take home all this amazing kit, BONUS... Talk about being looked after :p  This whole process took me personally about 3 hours, some guys took less time and some took foreverrrr, but honestly I didn't mind it at all, it was fun and everybody involved was so lovely!  I hate it when you get kit given to you that doesn't fit properly so this way we knew it would all be A okay! As soon as I get home I shall fill you all in on what my favourite piece of kit is and maybe in post a picture or to!  Anything you want to ask just leave me a comment and I'll get back to you :)  Over and out from rainy Scotland!

Busy Bee

Today i am heading down to Sheffield to compete in the ASA National Championships which for some athletes is the second chance to secure a place in Team GB for London 2012. All of the events that were'nt filled at the Olympic Trials have been left wide open for athletes at this selection to fill. The mens 200 backstoke was one of those events with no swimmers from Team GB selected for but yesterday both of the spots were filled so that adds another two swimmers to the list of Team GB, and while all this is happening i'm becoming slightly more excited. By the end of tomorrow all atheletes in the pool will be picked, which means that its here, there are only 35 days until The Olympic Games start!!!!!

Tomorrow i'm racing the 400m Freestyle along with my main event, 400m Individual Medley and this will be my last competition before the games so i'll be trying to swim a good time before i'm fresh and ready for the big day. If i can do that i'll give my self a HUGEE confidence boost and thats what i'd like most. :)

This week however i've been super, super busy!
Monday: On Monday after a bit of speed work i popped along to Kader Primary School and did a litte presentaion and a question and answers session with the entire school in their school hall and i loved doing it. (Hello everyone) The year 3 class had swimming lessons that day to and i would have loved to go along and watch, but the gym was calling my name. I still remember being in Nursery so it didn't seem like i left primary school 8 years ago.

Tuesday: I had the best day! I haven't really done very much photography work but i got to be a model for the day at Van Mildert... which was AWESOME! I had my hair done and got a new make over and some lovely clothes to; so i want to thank everyone who made me feel all pretty instead of my usual day to day look of tracksuits with my hair tied back. (a mess in other words)

Wednesday: I went out for tea, so maybe this was the best day of the week actually. The way to a swimmers heart - Food!

Thursday: I met Paul Drinkhall yesterday. He's qualified for London 2012, but in Table Tennis, so a very different sport from mine. I played table tennis in school PE lessons but when i say play, i mean attempted to play because each time the ball came my way it ended up the other side of the shcool hall, so the rally didn't last very long and i pretty must lost all of the time! Haha. Not my sport.

And the there's today Friday, of to sheffield! :)

See you later!

BARCELONA!

Sooo, last weekend I was in Barcelona racing :) I raced 400IM on Saturday morning and did my fastest heat swim untapered. For all those who don't know what a taper is it's basically when you ease off the hard work in training just before a competition; so things are going pretty well! I also raced a few other events and managed to do a few Personal Best times. :) I used to be a 200 Backstroke swimmer when I was younger and this weekend i forgot how much I enjoyed racing it. Unfortunately I brought home a bit of a tummy bug so it's been a bit of a kick in the teeth! I've been in bed for the last two days not very well at all and Ive heard that a few of the other guys away last weekend have also caught something while we were away. When i travel abroad I take extra care on looking after myself. I eat only foods that look cooked and wash my hands more often to kill the germs but unluckily for me this time I still managed to catch a bug. Today there's 50 days to go until the Olympic Games which means in about 40 days the GB swimming team will be off to London to start our final preparations as a team :) I'm so excited about the Olympics and I've even been getting a few more letters wishing me good luck! Now the Jubilee is over the next big event on the cards is is London 2012 and it seems everyone is getting excited about it! I've been following the Olympic torch around on the Internet occasionally and there are always crowds of people celebrating its arrival! Next Friday I have been asked to welcome the torch to the North East and I am so happy to have been asked. I will try take as many sneaky pictures of possible and I'll keep you all updated on how things go :) Let's just hope I don't do anything daft live on the TV. With my look I'll probably trip when the cameras on me! Ciao!

We all know exactly what to pack when we're jetting of abroad but when it comes to it, it takes forever! This weekend I'm away in Barcelona competing at The Mare Nostrum series so tonight I've been trying to decide what to take with me! I know the most important thing I need is a racing costume, and I've got that, but everything else always seems to take me aggessss to decide on! what snacks I want is normally the most important thing! (always thinking of food :) Anyway, down to the swimming.. I'm really excited to get away and race this weekend as there'll be some good competition and it's also another practice at getting up early in the morning and racing hard in the heats! At Olympics I'm going to have to pull a magic swim out the bag to final so if I can race well this weekend I'll give my self a confidence boost :) It's not impossible to have that amazing swim at the games as once I'm there anyone can grab one of those 8 places so fingers crossed I'm one of them! This weekend I also get to see, and room share, with one of my best friends in the world of swimming so it'll be nice to have a little catch up while we're there! But obviously, racing comes first! Anyway I'm of to sleep as its late! A swimmers bed time is always early. (well, it is for me) :)

Heyy all!

Training’s been going pretty well recently if you’d like to know. Last weekend I had my first competition since the Trials and it went better than expected. It’s always tough racing in your first meet after a major competition mid-season, as you never know what the result is going to be like, you think – am I fit enough yet, will I be able to finish (even though you know you can), how much is this going to hurt compared to last time and obviously you don’t want to swim terrible in the competition straight after you’ve just done some awesome swims. But luckily this meet went well for me and I’d say surprisingly better than I imagined. I didn’t race in tones of events because of my shoulder, I didn’t want to take another step backwards, but what I did swim i was chuffed with!

Last Friday I suppose you could say I got some ‘fan mail’. There was a letter delivered to my training pool by a little girl called Angel and she had written me a letter wishing me good luck in The Olympics. She drew me a lovely little picture of me standing by the pool in a red costume, but the most adorable thing about the letter was her spelling; she’s crossed out words she’d spelt wrong and said she that she was ‘incouraging’ me to do well, so I thought it was the sweetest thing in the world. I’ve never had anything like this before from anyone so it was absolutely lovely and I couldn’t help but read it over and over again. J It’s strange to think that when I was little I probably sent somebody who I looked up to a good luck letter... Soooo, I decided to reply. I’m sure that nobody ever replied to me and I wanted to tell her I’d read it. I got my little thinking cap on and wrote a letter back, so I’m hoping I get a reply; I might have found myself a little pen pal so fingers crossed! I don’t understand how some people don’t find things like that really cute, and to think that a little girl even bothered to think of me to write a letter to is pretty hard to believe. I hope I’m doing a good job at being a good role model otherwise I’m in trouble!!

On the other hand away from the pool I went to see The Avengers Assemble and I LOVED IT!!! My favourite is Iron Man by far. He is just the coolest dude on the planet, if he was actually real I mean. So if you haven’t seen it I would recommend you do ASAP.

While we’re on the topic of super heroes, the other day I got asked ‘if I could have any super power what it would be?’, and guess what I came up with… My power was to have the ability to click my fingers and be changed. It’s boring I know, but how practical is that?! As a swimmer you wake up - get changed, get to the pool - get changed, after training you – get changed and if you’ve had gym you - change again, so when you think about how many times a swimmer probably gets changed in the day (about 6/7 times) it makes sense! I’m going to throw this out there now, if anyone can come up with a better super power than mine, which I know is going to be really hard to do as mine was so awesome, I think you should post it in the comments and I’ll chose my favourite one sometime next week!

Cheers J

100 DAYS TO GO

Today is a pretty exciting day for any athlete competing at London 2012, there are only 100 days to go until the games begin!!!

It feels like yesterday there were 1000 days to go till London 2012… and now there are only 100 days until The Olympic Games go underway. 1000 days ago I was in London with 11 other athletes who were all aiming and working towards London just like me, some including Asha Randall a GB synchro athlete, and Jonathan Brownlee a triathlete. We all shared the same dream and luckily mine came true. At the time I was 16 so London still seemed out of reach, but I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t have the dream that I wanted to compete in London 2012; I don’t know why but I just did, and as the years ticked by I wanted that more and more. I’ve always tried hard to get where I am as I was never an amazing swimmer as a youngster, I just improved year after year and half of that was probably due to the fact I wanted to compete in London more than anything.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2706047/Teen-GB-the-teens-vying-for-Olympic-gold.html?offset=12

So for anyone out there who wants to achieve something, I say “why can’t you”.

This morning I’ve been celebrating 100 days to go with school children and Torch bearers from my home town Middlesbrough. It was great to pop along and see everyone getting so excited however, it was mentioned to me today that people had been saying that - the further away from the capital you are the less excited people seem to be about London 2012 and I definitely didn’t see that this morning. There were 100 school children cheering and waving flags and so many people popping over to see what was happening, even in the horrible cold weather everybody’s spirits were high.

I knew I would get excited about London, as come on who wouldn’t? but I really didn’t think I’d be so excited so early on. 100 days doesn’t seem like a very long time considering how long we have all been waiting for The Olympic Games to arrive in Britain, but I’ve only recently secured my place on Team GB so the reality for me has only just kicked in. I was planning on ‘keeping my cool’ and concentrating on the swimming but now I can’t wait for both! Tomorrow it will be 99 days, 98 days and before we all know it The Olympic Games will be here!

So… Let’s bring it on!!

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