Olympic gold medallist Tom Dean urges young to get jabbed

Tom Dean's success came after a difficult year when he twice caught Covid

Double Olympic gold medallist Tom Dean - who twice caught Covid-19 - is encouraging young people to get vaccinated.

The 21-year-old University of Bath student won gold in the 200m freestyle and the 4x200m freestyle relay 24 hours later at the Tokyo games.

His success came after a difficult year in which his training was interrupted when he twice caught Covid.

He said it was "so important" to get vaccinated.

Mr Dean, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, is now double jabbed.

He said, during his experience with the disease, he was bedbound and feared he "wouldn't make it to the Olympics".

He lost six weeks of training and at one point could not "walk up the stairs without coughing and wheezing".

'Slow build back'

"In swimming they say if you take one day out of the pool, it takes you two days to get back to where you were," he said.

"It set me back a lot. And then I got a second bout of Covid and I had to take another isolation period and then you have to do a slow build back into training, so around January this year I thought I wasn't going to even make the Olympics."

He had a three week build-up back to training, structured in order to prevent any long-term damage to his heart and lungs.

Despite the disruption, Mr Dean arrived at the Games as the second-fastest man in the past year.

And when it came to the closely-fought 200m freestyle, Mr Dean touched home in one minute 44.22 seconds, securing a British record in his debut Olympics.

Mr Dean hopes that others do not turn down the opportunity to get vaccinated against Covid which he said did not hit him "lightly".

"Talking about the jab is a difficult but important conversation to have. For the general population it's so important to get protected," he added.