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"I wanted my children to love the water. I took them all to baby swimming classes"

"I wanted my children to love the water. I took them all to baby swimming classes"

Tom Dean and his mum Jacquie talk raising a double-gold medallist who would become England's most decorated Commonwealth athlete

Tom Dean and his mother Jacquie Hughes. Photographer Ray Burmiston

Laura Rutkowski

TOM

My four siblings and I all got taken swimming when we were younger. I used to wake up at 6am to go swimming with my mum before she went to work, just to be in the water. Then for years she was getting five teenagers up to go training in a cold pool every morning – but it paid off.

I was talented and thought I could just get by without doing the work – but you need both. My older sister Connie was the hardest trainer I ever shared a pool with and I was inspired by her work ethic.

When I was eight, I had to write down what I wanted to be and my two things were: “I want to be the best swimmer in the world, and I want to be the best at maths in the world.” I did one of them!

Mum spends her birthdays at the pool during the British Swimming Championships and she’s been at pretty much every major meeting that I’ve had in my career. She lives abroad now, but she flies back whenever I’m racing. Her ongoing support is really quite special.

When I was eight I wrote “I want to be the best swimmer in the world”

Tom Dean

I’m in the pool six days a week, Monday through Saturday, doing two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. I’m also in the gym about three or four times a week.

Tom Dean and his mother Jacquie Hughes. Photographer Ray Burmiston

When I’m doing heavy training, I eat about 7,000 calories a day. I have two breakfasts – a big bowl of porridge in the morning, then I’ll train and have a cooked breakfast. I’ll have a big lunch – chilli or spaghetti bolognese. Snacks throughout the day include a peanut butter bagel and a banana. Then a big dinner and a bowl of yoghurt and granola before bed.

When I do well at major competitions, I’m most proud of seeing the joy that it brings my family. My best memory is when I returned home from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with two gold medals and we had a massive party – that stands out more than the physical silverware.

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JACQUIE

Tom Dean and his mother Jacquie Hughes. Photographer Ray Burmiston

I have three sons, Alfie, Tom and William, and two daughters, Connie and Nancy, and there’s only six years between the five of them. Tom was my first son and is the second eldest. He had very wide shoulders, so a doctor had to dislocate one of them to get him out. He was a huge, ten-pound baby and he ate continuously.

I’m from Liverpool but moved to London to go to university. I never had the chance to do any competitive sport when I was younger, but I’ve always loved swimming – I still swim every morning – and I wanted my children to love the water. I took them all to baby swimming classes when they were between six and eight weeks old.

Tom was a huge, ten-pound baby and he ate continuously.

Jacquie Hughes

Then it just went from there. It was seven mornings a week, five nights a week, with weekends and bank holidays taken up with competitions. When they were teenagers, I’d get up at 5.15am and walk along to each of their bedrooms and give them all their first wake-up call. I’d pack the van with all the swim bags and make warm milk and pains au chocolat for everyone. I can still never stay asleep beyond 5.20am.

I would never persuade, cajole or threaten them. If they didn’t want to do it, they stopped. Alfie left swimming for a year, then came back. Nancy always preferred her football.

All the time I was also working – I was an investigative TV journalist in current affairs for 20 years. Then I was a commissioning editor at the BBC, and head of documentary and history. I now do media policy and strategy and work in the Middle East. It’s only with hindsight that you look back and go, “That was a lot,” but it was just what we did.

It did put pressure on the family. I’ve been a single parent for ten years. That was really hard for all of us. The kids were adapting to that change, which was brutal, and then, practically, I was like: how are we going to do this now?

When Tom went to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he said, “I wouldn’t have got on this plane without you.” I said, “Tom, there were genuinely times when I didn’t know if I’d keep the show on the road.” But we did. That’s down to my kids. All I did was say, “If you want to do this, we’ll do it.”

Tom Dean competes in the 4x100m freestyle relay (Sat 27 July), the 4x200m freestyle relay (Tue 30 July) and the 200m individual medley (Thu 1 Aug)

Authors

Laura Rutkowski

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