Amber Keegan is making a name for herself in and out of the water.
The marathon swimmer has risen up the ranks less than a year after committing to the discipline.
With a World Championships fast approaching and an Olympics on the horizon, the 26-year-old combines her demanding sport with studying for a PhD in chemical engineering.
Here are five things she wants you to know about her.
The outdoors and the pool are my happy places
I got into swimming because it is a life skill and my parents wanted me to be safe, but I soon found a home in the water.
As a kid, I probably wouldn't have told you I got a sense of peace there, but looking back I really did.
It was the one place I really switched off from everything else going on and swimming was just always the place where I was happy and at peace.
Nothing can get to you when you're in the water.
The pool and the outdoors are both my happy places, so open-water swimming is the perfect combination.
My career has included a series of unfortunate events
I had a solid five years of injury and illness starting in 2017 when I tore my hamstring.
Then in early 2018, I got a shoulder injury and later that year I got hit by a Land Rover when cycling into uni which messed up my shoulder all the way down to my ankle.
And then just as I was getting back to full fitness all the pools shut because of Covid and that stopped my progress for two more years.
On top of that, between 2016 and 2018, although it is hard to put exact dates on it, I had an eating disorder and was suffering with depression.
It was a really dark time and lonely time. And even though I knew that probably 25% of the people around me had been through the same thing, I didn't have a single person who had spoken about that.
So, eventually, when I got through my own struggles, and was in a place where I could talk about things without them affecting me any more than, I wanted to be that story for someone else.
I founded a not-for-profit organisation
Off the back of my bumpy career so far, I set up Athlete Interactions.
It started out of some conversations I had with fellow women in sport and focusses on a twofold issue.
Firstly, women and girls experience disproportionate amounts of depression and anxiety eating disorders, and less well-talked about mental health issues as well.
But then on top of that, we also just can't seem to keep girls in sport when they get to their teenage years.
There are several reasons for that, but many are mental health-related.
Athlete Interactions aims to reduce stigma around talking about mental health in sport and provide positive action in that space.
The biggest thing we've launched publicly so far is the Athlete Support Network where any woman or girl aged 16 and above can pick up the phone and chat to any of our volunteers.
I always loved science and now I am doing a PhD in it
My PhD research group is focused on green nanomaterials and we're specifically working on silica.
Silica is one of the most mass-produced nanomaterials globally, and its uses that people encounter every day are as filler in car tyres and a binding agent in toothpaste.
However, the current industrial processes to make it use harsh temperatures and pHs and are bad for the environment.
In my research group, we use a water-based solvent and make it at room temperature, so it's much less environmentally harmful and we don't have any nasty waste products either.
My research specifically looks at how we can understand what's going on as it forms, but then also looks at how we scale up production to the levels we need it.
Missing out the Commonwealth Games gave me a second chance
2022 was my first year back to my best and I was competing in the 400 medley, but at the British Championships in April, I lost my head in the final.
It meant I didn’t make the Commonwealth Games which had been the thing getting me through injury and I was heartbroken.
I knew I still wanted to swim but I made my goal for the rest of the season to have fun.
So, I tried open-water swimming and absolutely loved it surprising myself at how competent I was.
I liked the fact there was no clock on the wall, so I chose marathon swimming over the 400 medley and by May 2023 I had qualified for the World Championships.
It feels like a second chance and I’m just incredibly grateful to be healthy and happy and to be doing sport and hopefully, I am showing people that those second chances are possible.
Sportsbeat 2024