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Mel Marshall: The woman behind the rise of Adam Peaty

Published 8 August 2016

Former Olympian Mel Marshall is a Rio 2016 Olympic team coach and head coach at City of Derby Swimming, home of the world record breaking National Lottery backed Olympic champion Adam Peaty. 

As a graduate of UK Sport’s Elite Coaching Apprenticeship Programme (ECAP), Mel specifically highlights that her learning through the programme enabled her to facilitate and support Adam Peaty to achieve his aspirations of becoming World Champion,World Record Holder and now Olympic Champion.

Already under Mel’s coaching, Adam Peaty has become the 2015 World Champion and the 2014 European and Commonwealth Champion in 100m breaststroke and the 2015 World Champion and 2014 European Champion in 50m breaststroke. Peaty is the first swimmer to win both sprint breaststroke events as the same World championships and the most successful British swimmer in a single world championships. 

Peaty has been coached by Marshall since 2009 when he walked through the doors of the City of Derby club and the pair have never looked back.

Speaking after the World Swimming Championships in 2015 Mel said: “I’m incredibly proud of him. I’ll never get this feeling again. I’ve coached him from the age of 14, so as much as I’m keeping a calm head on everything, I’m really enjoying this process.”

Marshall retired from swimming after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and embarked upon a career as a coach. A graduate of UK Sport’s Elite Coaching Apprenticeship Programme (ECAP), Marshall says she is enjoying the journey with Peaty.

“I left elite sport eight years ago, I’ve been desperate to be back and he allows me to do that. He’s amazing, it’s not very often that you have your standards matched, and we are completely matched on our work ethics, our morals, fair play, everything, and that’s rare to find. 

“There’s a lot of good things going on in swimming at the moment, I’ve been involved with international swimming for a long time but it just feels right, in terms of the leadership, the communication, the coaching, the atmosphere just feels cool, calm and collected and together it feels like we’re able to deliver.”

Marshall herself also has impressive athletic credentials; she is England’s most decorated female athlete ever at a Commonwealth Games, winning 6 medals in a single games. Mel is also a double Olympian and 5 time Olympic finalist, and has over 20 international medals to her name including World, European and Commonwealth.

Her first international appearance was at just 13 years of age in the European Youth Olympic festival where she won 4 gold medals. She continued as an international for a further 15 years retiring at the age of 26. 

Since retiring from swimming Mel has put her efforts into charity work, motivational functions and coaching, and her ethos is to empower others and educate them on how to adopt the character traits necessary for success. 

Mel is Ambassador for the charity ‘Sport in Action’ that uses sport as a vehicle to educate men, women and children on key issues. Mel has also been Project Manager for two other significant projects ‘Teach Zambia to Swim’ and ‘Bike Africa’.

Click here for more information on UK Sport’s Elite Coaching Apprenticeship Programme.

Click here to follow Mel Marsahall on Twitter.

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