Lucy Grieve can remember the exact moment she realised she might just be more talented than most in the water.
As a 12-year-old, Grieve reached the B Final at the Scottish Short-Course Swimming Championships and given she was competing with, and beating, fully-grown women, it suddenly dawned on her that swimming may be a more realistic career path than she had ever contemplated.
“I was only at those Scottish Champs because my club, South Ayrshire, needed a relay swimmer and so they chose me to be a part of the relay team,” Grieve, now 21, recalls.
“To swim in the relay, you had to swim an individual event so I was chucked into the 50m butterfly, swam really well in the heats and then, the way it worked out with some people pulling out, I ended up in the B final. I was this little girl swimming against grown-ups.
“I set the Scottish record for 12-year-olds for the 50m butterfly and that's when I thought, oh wow, maybe this could be something.”
Grieve progressed impressively as a junior and, having been a part of GB’s team for the European Junior Championships in 2021, it appeared her transition into the senior ranks would be seamless.
This, however, could not have been further from the truth and, in reality, the year after her junior GB appearance was the hardest year of her life.
“I just tried to do too much,” Grieve says of 2022.
“I wanted to study dentistry at university so I was doing my advanced highers at school, I was trying to have a social life, and I was trying to swim.
“And nothing went well. I didn't get into dentistry at uni and I missed the Commonwealth Games team, so it was a very hard year because those were the two massive things that I wanted, and I didn't get either of them. I really struggled with that.
“By the end of 2022, I felt horrendous. I remember around Christmas-time bawling my eyes out to my mum and telling her I didn't think I was cut out for this.
“It was an important lesson for me, though, because it showed me that you can't have it all, at least not in the way that I wanted to have it all."
After such a demoralising and disheartening year, few would have blamed Grieve had she considered hanging-up her goggles for good.
However, it’s just as well she decided to give things one last go, and in the two years since, Grieve has established herself not only as one of the best current Scottish butterfly swimmers, but one of the best of all-time alongside her friend and Stirling University training partner, Keanna MacInnes.
Grieve is currently joint fastest-ever in the Scottish all-time list in the 50m butterfly and second fastest-ever in the 100m butterfly so it’s comes as something of a surprise to hear that the Ayrshire native still has trouble believing in herself and her ability, although with this humility comes several positives.
“Growing up, I never viewed myself as being very good and I was always bad for not fully believing in myself, but the upside of this was that I never put too much pressure on myself,” she says.
“To me, swimming always just felt like a game.
“As a junior, me and another girl used to take the Scottish record from each other every few months and so it just felt like a fun game trying to get the record back from her rather than feeling under pressure to succeed.
“I probably still don’t believe in myself as much as I should so even though there's so many things I'd love to achieve in swimming, I don't put too much pressure on myself because I don't always expect these huge things to happen.”
In the past 12 months, Grieve has established herself as more than capable of competing on the international stage, with her selection for last summer’s European Championships marking her senior GB debut.
And, having had a taste of a major championship, she’s keen for more.
This summer’s major meet is the World Championships in Singapore in July and for Grieve to make it into the GB team, she knows she’s going to have to produce the performance of a lifetime at this week’s British Swimming Championships, which begin today in London.
“I’m looking forward to the British Champs - the time to qualify for the World Champs is crazy-fast so the way I'm looking at this week is I just want to swim well and I'd love to swim a PB,” she says.
“The Scottish record is 57.9 seconds so to get close to that would be amazing. But panicking about making a team isn't going to change anything - I just want to focus on swimming fast and if that means I get to Worlds in the summer then even better.”
Also worth looking out for over the next six days from a Scottish perspective is Duncan Scott, who has already secured selection for this summer’s World Championships courtesy of his silver medal in the 200m IM at last year’s Olympic Games, who will be swimming the 200m free, 200m fly and 200m IM; Katie Shanahan who will be swimming the 100m and 200m backstroke and 200m IM; Kathleen Dawson in the 50m and 100m backstroke and Lucy Hope in the 100m and 200m freestyle.
Also in action will be Olympic medallists Tom Dean, Freya Anderson, Ben Proud and James Guy however, three-time Olympic champion, Adam Peaty, is absent.
