Jessica Jane Applegate: Para swimming champion targets Commonwealth success

Jessica Jane Applegate was appointed an MBE in the 2013 New Year's Honours list

Jessica Jane Applegate is targeting Commonwealth Games success after collecting five medals at the recent World Para Swimming Championships.

She won three silvers, a bronze and a relay gold in Madeira, where Team GB finished fourth in the medal table.

And her success was achieved despite her training being disrupted by a chlorine shortage at pools in Norfolk.

The 25-year-old will be competing for England at the Commonwealth Games, which start in Birmingham on 28 July.

"I'm not going to add too much pressure to myself, I'm just going to get back in the pool and see where we're at because I normally train for the 100m butterfly and this is a freestyle race that we're in," she told BBC Radio Norfolk.

"It's really exciting - and I'm very excited that I can pack what I want and not have it weighed by airport security, who then tell me 'you need take all that food out of there, madam'.

"In swimming, television sometimes like us to swim later, it means we get lunch at 12 and then we're not done until 10pm, so I take pasta pots, protein bars, protein shakes, drinks, all sorts - you name it, it's in my bag."

Applegate, who has Asperger's Syndrome, won the S14 200m freestyle gold at the London Paralympics in 2012, when aged 16 - the same event she will focus on in Birmingham - and came home with three medals from both the 2016 Rio Games and Tokyo last year.

Looking back at her recent medal haul in Madeira, she said: "Everyone knows what I'm like, I'm always tough on myself. Those silvers could have been better.

"But training hadn't gone too well. As everyone knows, there's a chlorine shortage, it's been very difficult for local pools to get hold of chlorine so they've been shut. It wasn't an ideal run-in for the World Championships but I did come away with three silvers, a gold and bronze so that's pretty good."

Worldwide chlorine shortages have been attributed to a backlog in supply from China because of Covid, worldwide transportation issues and a fire in a US chemical plant in late 2020 and the situation has led to numerous temporary pool closures in the UK.

"One day I'll get a good run-in to a competition, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. We thought this would be it and then there was the chlorine shortage, so it's been really difficult trying to train at pools here, there and everywhere all across Norwich," she added.

"Fingers crossed, things might be ok for a little bit but you just never know."