Jessica-Jane Applegate MBE, a British woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, is a Paralympic swimmer. She won her first international medal, a bronze, at the 2011 British International Disability Championship for the MC 50m Freestyle event. Amazingly, she won this medal at age fifteen. She then qualified for the London 2012 Paralympic Games at age sixteen and won gold for the S14 200m Freestyle event (see that race here). This made her the first British person classified as “intellectually disabled” to win Paralympic gold. The following year she was appointed MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her services in swimming.
Since then, Jessica-Jane has continued to win medals at domestic and international competitions in a variety of swimming events. Freestyle, Backstroke, Butterfly, Individual Medley, every year she finds herself on the podium multiple times. She even took home three medals, two silver and one bronze, from the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. At the British Summer Championship in 2017, she broke the world record for swimming the S14 100m Butterfly event at 1:04.46. Now she’s training for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, though a funding cut is presenting some difficulties in achieving that goal.
When she’s not training or competing, Jessica-Jane goes across the UK visiting schools and swim groups to share her story.
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