Rebecca Redfern

Rebecca Redfern

Redfern at the Rio2016 Paralympics
Personal information
Nickname(s) Becky
National team Great Britain
Born (1999-12-19) 19 December 1999
Droitwich Spa, England
Sport
Sport Swimming
Strokes Breaststroke
Classifications S13, SB13, SM13
Club Worcester Swimming Club
Coach Mark Stowe

Rebecca Redfern (born 19 December 1999) is a British visually impaired para-swimmer from Droitwich who competes in S13/SB13/SM13 disability categories. Rebecca holds British and European records in SB13 100m breaststroke.

Personal life

Rebecca is the daughter of Katharine and Steve Redfern, and has three brothers, Anthony, Matthew and Nathan, all of whom also swim competitively. Rebecca currently attends Sixth Form at Droitwich Spa High School where she is studying A Levels in Maths, Business, and Psychology.

When Rebecca was 7 she was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition known as Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), and now has grossly impaired visual fields with no peripheral vision and poor frontal vision.

Rebecca is a member of Worcester Swimming Club and trains 16 hours per week in the pool plus 2 hours in the gym. She represents Worcester Swimming Club at club, county, regional and national level, as well as representing her country at international level.

Following her successes in 2016, Rebecca has been honoured by the local community having been invited to switch on the Droitwich Christmas Lights[1] She was presented with the Hereford & Worcester Sports Award for the Junior Female Sportsperson Of The Year,[2] followed by the Aspiring Talent Award at the West Midlands Sports Awards.[3]

Swimming career

Rebecca has been a competitive swimmer since the age of 9 but didn't enter the para-swimming world until 14 when she was spotted by the British Swimming Vision for Rio programme in September 2014.

On 3 May 2016 Rebecca made her international debut at the 2016 IPC Swimming European Championships in Funchal, Portugal, claiming a silver medal and narrowly missing out on gold to Elena Krawzow (Germany) by 0.02 seconds.[4]

Rebecca achieved the consideration time for the 2016 Rio Paralympics at the 2016 British Para-Swimming International Meet in Glasgow, UK where she set a new World Record of 1:16.86 in the process, beating the previous one set 14 years ago by Kirby Cote of Canada.[5]

She then made her Paralympic debut when she represented Great Britain at the 2016 Rio Paralympics where she swam a time of 1:13.81 which was over two seconds inside her own world record, although finished second behind Fotimakhon Amilova of Uzbekistan who set a new world record in 1:12.45.[6] Rebecca's time also claimed the Worcestershire county record as an able bodied swimmer, and the IPC European record.

References


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