Ellen Keane: ‘The love I have for swimming always outweighs the hard times’

Ellen Keane is an Irish Paralympian swimmer who brought home a bronze medal for her performance in the 100-metre breaststroke in Rio in 2016. Born with an underdeveloped arm, Keane has been representing Ireland in para swimming events as an amputee since she was nine years old.

Despite her amazing career to date, with gold and bronze medal wins in European and world events, Keane’s unwavering determination has been questioned by her peers for her dedication to her sport.

Luckily, she didn’t listen, she appears on billboards now.

How did you get into sport?

I kind of did everything as a kid. I played GAA, I did dance – I was really into dancing, and I swam as well. I did swim lessons because my brothers and my sister did lessons. Then my dad somehow got in contact with the manager of the Paralympic swim team at the time. Her name was Geraldine Conway, and her daughter had the same arm as me. She recommended or invited me up to a disability competition in Northern Ireland in Lisburn. I was either seven or eight at the time. I went to the competition and I really enjoyed it, I loved racing. I loved the control I had, and I got told that I was quite good, so I decided to keep it up.

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I joined a club and I started off doing one session a week to two sessions a week, to three and four, and before you know it, I’m getting my parents up at 4.20am four or five times a week so that I can go swimming and then go swimming again after school. I can never really remember thinking I really want to do this, it was more like, I love doing this.

I was competing in hip-hop dancing at the same time, so I was actually dancing three times a week as well. I was winning trophies and I really, really loved dancing. It got to the point where I had to choose between swimming and dancing. And I think somehow, I just made the smart choice of going with swimming because I felt like there was more of an opportunity there for me than there would be in dancing. I still love dancing. I still miss it. I’d love to go back to it one day. That’s when things started to get serious when I chose swimming over dancing.

It all just went really fast from there. I had talent when I was a kid and I got to represent Ireland for the first time when I was nine, I went to a disability competition in England. I got my first drug test when I was 10 and then, when I was 12, I started to get close to the qualifying time for Beijing. I went to the Beijing Paralympics when I was 13.

Was there a time you nearly gave up sport and who encouraged you to keep going?

In the June before Beijing my appendix burst, and I got carried away in an ambulance. I just remember being in the ambulance and thinking I don’t think I’m going to Beijing. I had to stay in the hospital for a week and they told me I couldn’t train so I had to get loads of home gym equipment, you see, I was ready for this Covid thing before it even happened! I had an exercise bike and loads of gym equipment at home and that’s what I did until I was allowed back in the water.

I think swimming is a hard sport mentally because it can be quite isolating. Although you have your teammates and you have a club that you might swim in, you are still quite isolated. Your friends want to go out and have parties and have fun or go to someone’s house after school and you can’t because you’ve swimming. It was little things like that kind of got to me a bit.

I lost a lot of friends because of it. I don’t know if it would be the same now but back then girls and sport wasn’t really a thing. I kind of found myself in a lot of toxic friendships or relationships where a lot of people might be jealous of what I was doing or wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t support me, they’d put me down. Because of that I would try to dim my light a bit, I wouldn’t talk about swimming and if people wanted to talk to me about my sport and how successful I’ve been I wouldn’t talk about it – I wouldn’t want to be centre of attention.

I think those are the times that I did say I felt like quitting, because you can kind of feel like, if the people I love, or who are supposed to love me can’t support me, why am I doing it? And you’re trying to please everybody and it’s hard to do what’s right for you and do what’s right for your sport, when you don’t have that support around you.

I started to realise my own worth. You realise other things are being impacted so your sport is being impacted. A lot of breakups happened post-competitions.

What advice do you have for young people getting into sport?

The first bit of advice I have is to make sure that you love it because there are so many highs and lows that come with sport. There are times when I hate swimming but the times that I love swimming outweigh the hate, you just have to realise that there are going to be really, really tough times. You need to ask the question; do you love it enough to give it your all? Obviously, it’s different if you just want to take part in a sport, but if you want to compete in a sport and be competitive in the sport, you have to be prepared for having hard times, but knowing that your love for it will outweigh the hard times.

And then obviously, just make sure to look around and ask yourself the hard question; are the people in my inner circle really there for me? Are they going to be supportive of me?

If they make your life easier than harder, that’s what you’re looking for.

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