Honorary Doctorate awarded to former Ipswich Olympic swimmer

Former Ipswich Olympic swimmer, Karen Pickering MBE, has described receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Suffolk as a “huge honour”, two decades after retiring from Team Ipswich.

The international swimming star’s glittering career included eight World Championship medals – four of which were golds – 14 European Championship medals, 38 National Championship titles and 13 Commonwealth Games medals, of which four were gold.

In addition, she has four consecutive Olympic Games under her belt.

Awarded an MBE for services to swimming in 1994, Karen trained at Crown Pools in Ipswich during her competitive career, representing Team Ipswich from 1997 to 2005.

On Monday evening, Karen returned to the town to join students in a ceremony on Ipswich waterfront, and was joined by her proud twin daughters and her mum for the occasion.

Karen said: “It's such a huge honour and such a special moment for me. I find it very emotional any time I come back to Ipswich because the town was such a huge part of my life – 18 years of my swimming career, all the major championships I competed in was while I was training here, when Crown Pools was really my second home.

“It almost feels like quite a while ago that I was doing the swimming part, so to still be remembered and to be honoured in this way is incredibly special.”

Since retiring from active competition, Karen has been a passionate advocate for athletes and young swimmers, including running her own swimming schools for 10 years and contributing to athlete welfare and development as Chair of the British Athletes Commission, among a number of board positions at various sporting organisations.

In 2013, she also founded the Karen Pickering SWIM Foundation, offering bursaries to children who might not otherwise afford swimming lessons.

Next year, she will take up a new leadership role as President of the English Schools Swimming Association.

She also supports her two daughters with their own swimming competitions, which included events at Crown Pools among their first races.

Karen described those roles as “a big part of what drives me more recently,” adding that she wanted to “give athletes a voice”.

In her advice to graduating students, she referenced breaking her back in a car accident at the age of 24 and not knowing if she would ever swim again.

She added: “I didn’t stop in the beginning and actually pat myself on the back and appreciate what I had done, but when there was that point when I didn’t know if I was ever going to swim again, after that the second half of my career I always just made sure that I appreciated how far I have come. Sometimes you don’t realise what you have achieved, you are always looking at what you still have got to do.”

Karen joins a roster of honorary graduates at the University of Suffolk, which inprevious years included international superstar Ed Sheeran MBE, Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna, West End star Kerry Ellis and TV presenter Angela Rippon CBE among others.

To find out more about honorary graduates at the University of Suffolk, visit the webpage here.