Black Swimming Association: Swimming for all

How can you overcome stereotypes, and get everyone swimming?

Alice Dearing has enjoyed a highly decorated career, culminating at the Tokyo Olympics. She made history, becoming the first black woman to swim for Team GB at an Olympic Games in 2021.

Alice started swimming at a young age, encouraged by her mum. She fell in love with the sport and rapid progress followed: success at county level, then regional, then national. She was junior World Champion in 2016 and took on the gruelling open water 10km at the Olympics four years later.

Now, having retired from swimming, Alice is taking on an even bigger challenge. She was shocked when she discovered that, in 2020 in England, 95% of black adults and 80% of black children did not swim. Similarly, 93% of Asian adults and 78% of Asian children did not swim either.

And so, Alice co-founded the Black Swimming Association (BSA). The aim was to get more people into pools, dispelling stereotypes which have been holding back black and Asian people from learning to swim. 

With help from The National Lottery, the BSA is now helping communities across the country – getting many people into the water for the first time. It’s been a huge success; Alice has seen firsthand how people are overcoming their fear of water and are discovering the pleasures of swimming. 

Game Changers host, Aimee Fuller - two-time Olympian, author and broadcaster – meets Alice. They compare Olympic experiences as National Lottery funded elite athletes and discuss Alice’s Game Changing work. Aimee discovers Alice’s incredible drive – to change the narrative around how black and Asian people are viewed in aquatics.

We are also joined by broadcaster, Clare Balding, who reads a new poem celebrating the National Lottery’s Sports Game Changers.  

And poet Robert Montgomery describes how meeting Alice inspired his work, which was displayed with great drama in sporting locations across the UK.

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Game Changers is brought to you by National Lottery players, who raise £30 million each week for good causes across the UK. For more information about projects that help ordinary people, visit: https://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk

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