British Swimming to announce new Olympic leaders

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Rebecca Adlington
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Four-time Olympic medallist Rebecca Adlington has spoken out about her frustration over the delay in appointment of a new British Swimming head coach.

British Swimming will reveal the identity of their new head coach and performance director next week.

Previous head coach Denis Pursely left after London 2012 and Australian Michael Scott resigned after a review concluded he would need to live full-time in the UK in order to continue.

In December, Rebecca Adlington attacked the sport for delaying new appointments and insisted they should be British.

Her long-term coach Bill Furniss has been strongly linked with the post.

Adlington, Great Britain's most successful swimmer of all-time, is set to make a "major announcement" about her future on Tuesday and has previously stated her decision whether to continue in the sport will be linked to Furniss' movements.

"If I was going to carry on, I would only want to be coached by Bill," Adlington told the BBC in late 2012.

British Swimming fell short of their Olympic medal target of five, winning three in London and although a subsequent review ruled the sport's programme was "not broken" they received a £4m funding cut for the Rio 2016 cycle.

John Atkinson, who as performance director to the ParalympicsGB swimming team led them to 39 medals at London 2012, was one of the favourites to switch over to the non-disabled discipline.

However, he has agreed to head up, external the Canadian Swimming high-performance programme.