Paris Olympics 2024: Meet the County Durham swimming coach transforming Team GB medal chances

Dave McNulty explains his coaching techniques ahead of the Paris Olympics

When Dave McNulty took over as British Swimming's Lead Coach in 2008, Team GB had claimed just 16 Olympic swimming medals in 24 years.

Across the last three games and under McNulty's lead, the team has already more than doubled this number, claiming 17, with more expected in Paris.

McNulty, who comes from County Durham, was awarded an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours list last month for his services to swimming giving him his time in the limelight.

"My job's usually to make sure the swimmers become either world champions or Olympic Champions, and they get them," McNulty said. "I think we got three of my swimmers at the last Olympics got MBEs and I just got it and thought, wow, that's actually something that I've done for me."

One of the athletes McNulty has coached directly is Tom Dean. The 24-year-old made Olympic history in Tokyo by becoming the first British male swimmer to win two gold medals at the same games.

"Without bigging him up to much, of course I owe all my success to Dave," Dean said. "The work I've done with Dave has been instrumental in allowing me to hit that senior performance level. Win Olympic gold medals, world championship golds, commonwealth golds and everything else that I've done in my senior career.

"There's a reason why he got an MBE and why he got awarded Team GB's coach of the year after the Tokyo Games. A fantastic coach and someone I owe my senior career to as well."

The merits of McNulty's coaching are obvious through British Swimming's results but he has been keen to stress it takes more than just the work done in the pool.

"Coaching is picking them up and taking them on a little journey and going for a walk and talking to them," he explained. "We're part of a team, we're here to help and I think that little message at this level is what coaching is.

"I can write ten 100m freestyle off but most coaches can do that. To get them when the chips are down, pick them back up and set them on a new path, to me, that's coaching.

"Each medal comes with a journey of good and bad things, hard training and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn't."

British hopefuls are among the favourites for a host of swimming events and McNulty's is confident the team can reach their potential.

"We will do our best, and I will as a coach, to get the best performance in Paris on that particular day," he said. "If we do that, we think the medals will come to us."

The Olympic swimming schedule begins on Saturday 27 July.

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