When Laura Stephens first met Essex-based swimming coach Michelle Young at the tender age of nine, she hated being in the water.
Now, the 24-year-old is the world 200m butterfly champion and on her way to her second Olympic Games.
“I absolutely hated it [swimming] at the start,” Stephens told BBC Essex.
“There were lots of tears. I didn’t enjoy going in the water, didn’t enjoy putting my face in the water especially – the signs definitely weren’t there at the start.”
With her gold medal at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Stephens became the first British female individual swimming world champion since Rebecca Adlington in 2011.
“She needed to get that affinity with the water and when she got that, when it clicked, she was away,” Young told BBC Essex.
“She was absolutely at one with the water. You could just see she could move in the water so effortlessly.”
In 2012, while British swimmers were competing for Olympic glory in London, Stephens was winning every event she participated in at that year’s county championships.
“I started to win a few medals and then that’s where competitiveness overtook the side where I don’t like water,” Stephens said.
“I remember watching Rebecca Adlington win double gold in the pool [at the 2008 Beijing Olympics], watching Michael Phelps win his eight medals as well, and just some crazy things were happening in the pool at the time. That was really inspirational.”
Stephens has come a long way from her county championship days with Colchester Swimming Club but the journey has come with obstacles – and not just her childhood dislike of the water.
“She had quite a few challenges – she was asthmatic, she’s coeliac – and nothing was going to stand in her way,” Young said.
“It was just written through her, like a stick of rock, champion was written through her.”
Stephens made her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, finishing sixth in her semi-final and missing out on a spot in the final by a second.
Now, she will travel to this summer’s Games in Paris with much higher expectations.
“In Tokyo, I didn’t perform exactly how I wanted to,” Stephens said.
“That’s something that I’m definitely looking to rectify this summer – to be in the final and hopefully be in the fight for a medal in the 200m butterfly.”
Young, who coached Stephens from the age of nine to 14, was with the swimmer when she had her first taste of the Games at the 2012 Olympic qualifiers.
“I remember we were allowed to go in before and we were allowed to go to all the pools and we jumped up on the podium and took photos,” Young said.
“It was absolutely fabulous to then think she was at the 2020 Olympics and now Paris.
“From those Olympic trials when she was a little girl, she has now made that journey.”
Stephens’ story is featured on Hometown Hero, available to listen to now on BBC Sounds.
