Ollie Morgan Talks Rapid Progress, Nudging His British Record & A Thriving Combination In Birmingham
Ollie Morgan has come a long way since his first British Championships in 2022. Then 18, he made two finals that year at Ponds Forge as he finished sixth and seventh in the 50 and 100 back respectively after which he made huge progress.
A year later Morgan swept the three backstroke events in the same pool to qualify for the World Championships in Fukuoka where he missed the two-length final by one place and 0.05. He also led off the Great Britain men’s medley relay that finished fifth.
On to 2024 and Morgan took another giant step as he lowered the British 100 back record to 52.70 at the Olympic trials in London. With that, he cut 0.03 from the previous standard of 52.73 held by Liam Tancock since the 2009 World Championships when Morgan was six. He secured the backstroke double with a 1:56.27 PB over 200m before going on to make his Olympic debut in Paris.
In what was only his second senior international meet, Morgan thrived in the cauldron of La Défense Arena to finish eighth in the 100 back and fourth with the men’s medley relay.
Ollie Morgan: Photo Courtesy: Morgan Harlow, Aquatics GB
The University of Birmingham swimmer then finished off the year at the short-course worlds in Budapest.
It’s fair to say, the 21-year-old has come a long way in a short space of time. Speaking to Swimming World ahead of the Aquatics GB Swimming Championships, Morgan said: “100 per cent. I’ve not just matured as a person, but as an athlete as well in terms of dealing with these pressures.
“Last year, big year, it’s an Olympic year, there’s so much that you can miss out on going into trials. I put so much pressure on myself to make the team and on how I was going to perform. Now it’s kind of taking that step back with that experience I’ve gained and kind of trusting what I’ve done. I trusted what I’d done before but it was in a different environment – I’d never surrounded myself with qualifying for an Olympic Games.
“And then the experience you gain at the Games just changes you almost. Not that I don’t feel pressure anymore – I obviously feel pressure and if you’re not feeling pressure it obviously doesn’t mean enough to you.
“I think it’s just the experience that I’ve gained and the training we’ve done and the confidence that we’ve built has just set me up in a really good place to perform. And I’m excited to race and not kind of feeling like my stomach’s going to fall out. It’s a good place to be – we’re loving it and just trying to push the limit as much as we can.”
Rattling His British Record & A Thriving Combination In Birmingham
Morgan returns to London for the national championships which run from 15-20 April at the Aquatic Centre with the six-day event doubling as trials for the World Championships in Singapore.
In the last couple of months Morgan has delivered performances that hint at fine times to come that could bring with them further tilts at rewriting the record books.
He went within 0.01 of his British 100 back standard in 52.71 to go top of the 2025 rankings as he completed the backstroke treble at the BUCS Championships in February.
He followed that up with 52.97 at the Edinburgh International Meet in March along with a 24.83 effort over 50m.
The BUCS performance was a confidence boost given he wasn’t tapered or rested for what was his first race since short-course worlds in December 2024 bar one day off before the start of the meet.
Ollie Morgan: Photo Courtesy: Morgan Harlow, Aquatics GB
“I was pretty shocked to be that fast,” he said. “It was quite annoying to be that close and to not have just dipped the other way but I think in terms of the things we’d been working on, it kind of all came together there.”
Morgan is coached by Gary Humpage at the University of Birmingham where he’s in the final year of a Sports Coaching degree.
A swim teaching module entails a trip every Tuesday to teach Stage 1 and 2 lessons to a group of seven and eight year olds. It has also involved giving a speech in front of all the children and teachers once they learned he’d competed at Paris 2024.
Given he split his final year at university so he could focus on his Olympic preparations, it’s proving to be demanding with Morgan studying almost full-time while training and racing.
Once he’s graduated he plans to stay on in Birmingham rather than join one of the Aquatics GB performance centres. There have been conversations about moving elsewhere but in Morgan’s eyes – “don’t fix what’s not broken.”
Morgan arrived in the midlands city at 18, eight years after he started competing at Ludlow Swimming Club in Shropshire, a county in the west midlands of England which borders Wales.
From swimming three times a week with no gym work, Morgan had to adapt to a full programme of eight sessions per week plus dryland training.
The combination of Morgan, Humpage and the University of Birmingham is one that’s working well with the athlete thriving in what he describes as a low-pressure environment.
“We didn’t expect to be at the Olympic Games at all,” he said. “Making nationals for the first time in my first year was insane and then I was in the A final and I wouldn’t be able to explain how I felt at that moment, I was petrified: I was in the lane next to Luke (Greenbank) and I was like it’s Luke! But I’d never been put in that situation before so it was a learning curve and then it was keep improving, things to work on and we just kept at it and here we are, never really stopped the progress and yeah, loving it.”
