Richards poised to complete journey to Olympic stardom

A five-year-old Richards saw no reason why he should wear armbands when older kids didn’t, so tore them off and jumped into the deep end of the hotel pool.

“My parents both had a heart attack,” Richards remembers. “My Dad (Simon) ran in and jumped in after me but I was fine and I loved it and that was where I found I had a real love for the water.”

On returning home, Simon and Matt’s mum Amanda took him straight to swimming lessons at Droitwich Leisure Centre and he soon enrolled in the Droitwich Dolphins Swimming Club, later to join Worcester Swimming Club.

Fast forward just over a decade and the rest is Olympic history in the making.

Richards is the rising star of British swimming, heading to Paris 2024 as a world champion and in search of an unprecedented medal haul.

The motivation remains the same as that boiling hot summer’s day in the Canary Islands: a lifelong love of being in the water and pushing his limits.

“Fundamentally, I’m just really excited to race,” says Richards, who tried rugby and taekwondo before settling on the sport of swimming.

“That’s what drives me and pushes me every day.

“The outcomes that come with that can be special, incredible moments but the reason why I do what I do is because I love it.

“I’m just doing what I enjoy and any pressure that comes with that, comes from doing a good job of doing what I love. I have to pinch myself sometimes and The National Lottery funding means I can focus on this all day, every day.”

Richards was born in the West Midlands and currently lives near Bath, with a training base at Millfield School, but is registered as a Welsh swimmer through his Cardiff-born father.

“I’m extremely proud to represent Wales,” he says. “It’s something I dreamt of when I was a little boy. When I was seven or eight years old watching the national rugby team, the sense of pride was on another level.”

Dad Simon has always been Matt’s biggest fan and advocate and he unwittingly played a role in his son’s sporting development at London 2012. A police officer, Simon was deployed at the Olympic sites in Stratford.

“I was very young, I didn’t actually get to go and watch any events in person,” recalls Richards. “We didn’t manage to get any tickets!

“When Dad came home after being there the whole time, we’d been watching it on TV, he’d tell us all about how amazing it was and the incredible sights and sounds of the Olympics.

“The Olympic torch also came through the town I grew up in so all of these small things were really inspirational.”

Richards went to his first Olympics in Tokyo as a wide-eyed teenager, winning Olympic relay gold at the first attempt and unable to resist giggling at an infamous Claire Balding innuendo.

After reaching the pinnacle of his sport in 2021, he hit rock bottom a year later, finishing 30th at the World Championships.

“I was going so far backwards, my times were dreadful compared to where they were before,” he said.

“It was really tough, really hard. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I needed a big step back, to reinvent myself and work out why I was no longer at my best.

“It took some hard conversations with the people around me and my loved ones to figure all of that out.”

Richards decided to switch training bases, now working under Ryan Livingstone at Millfield School. Within a year, he rose from 30th to be crowned world champion in the 200m freestyle.

“I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing,” said Richards. “I didn’t enjoy the kind of training I was doing. It didn’t work, I was going through the motions in a style of training I didn’t like.

“It made me fall out of love with the sport at the time. I swim best when I’m happy and enjoying what I’m doing and I needed to find a way to do that.

“I think that whole period stands me in good stead for the future. To be able to learn from that year, understand where it went wrong and get back on the horse, it’s so valuable. I wouldn’t change that year for the world, I’d keep the lessons I learned from it.”

Richards, amongst other athletes, has benefitted from the £143.6 million invested into British Aquatics since The National Lottery started funding the sport in 1997. That funding has ensured that athletes have world class support – from coaches, to facilities, physios and overseas training.

Now he heads to Paris engaged to be married to fellow GB swimmer Emily Large and a fully-fledged freestyle powerhouse, the fastest man in the world this year over 200 metres.

Having hit qualifying standards in six events, Richards could race 15 times in nine days in pursuit of a glut of gold at the Games.

He says: “People are always going to have expectations but I know I’m in a good place physically and mentally and I can go and do some amazing things.”

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