Swimmer Davies dips into writing

By Clare Gabriel
BBC News

David Davies says he will quit swimming after the next Olympics

The last time we saw him was being stretchered away from a lake after he narrowly missed out on an Olympic gold in Beijing.

But swimming Welshman David Davies has been busy since then writing a very short autobiography about his life so far.

He is now back in the pool, amassing up to 80,000 metres a week in training for Rome's World Championships and, of course, London 2012.

Davies, who will still be only 28, then intends to bow out of competitive swimming. He says he can't imagine "topping" competing in his home Olympics.

At Beijing Davies picked up the silver medal in the 10km open water swim, coming home just 1.5 seconds behind Dutchman Maarten van der Weijden, at the end of a gruelling swim of more than 1 hour 50 minutes.

He had already won an Olympic bronze at Athens four years before so the dream of picking up the gold at the UK games "would be the ultimate," said Davies.

So he is now back in the pool at Loughborough where he is based pounding the lengths for up to 30 hours a week and swimming between 75,000 and 80,000m.

Davies took 1500m freestyle bronze at the Athens Olympics

It is a demanding regime and not for the faint-hearted, but Olympian Davies has his sights set firmly on trying to win that elusive gold for his medals cabinet.

He said he may swim both 1500m and the 10km at London in front of the home crowds.

"But if it makes sense to drop one to make the other better, then I will because I won't have any more opportunities," he said.

Either way, he insists that he will bow out of swimming in 2012, because "it won't get any better than that at home".

Davies is from Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan and a very keen supporter of everything Welsh.

So he was very keen to get involved with writing In At The Deep End from Barry to Beijing when he was asked.

The biography charts his early years up to the open top post Olympic victory parades in London and Cardiff Bay.

The book is one in a series encouraging adult literacy

It is part of a joint venture project between Basic Skills Cymru and the Welsh Books Council to promote adult literacy, something which Davies said he was keen to endorse.

Davies said: "I had a nice long break after Beijing and was able to spend some time doing the writing before I got back into the pool in October.

"If I can inspire any one to the kind of success I've had, that's a great thing.

"I would definitely like to do more (writing) if there's enough interesting stuff about me to write."

And when his career in the pool is over, Davies has not decided what he will do. He is looking at all the options.

"I will have to get a career, maybe joining the police, maybe helping with things like this (ie book writing)," said the swimmer.

He is as he said "keeping his options open" but whatever he will be doing, the ardent Cardiff City and Wales fan is sure he will be based in his homeland which he comes back to now most weekends.

Who knows, he may even end up appearing in Gavin and Stacey.

The swimmer has, as he says, "got the accent for it" and famously did a radio audition with Nessa (Ruth Jones) during last year's Olympics for a part in the next series of the BBC comedy set in his home town.

But he said: "I'm still waiting for that call".