Karen Pickering

Karen Pickering MBE is a seasoned athlete, a swimmer who has competed in a staggering four consecutive Summer Olympics, from 1992 to 2004. She has picked up a whole host of medals in the World Championships, European Championships and the Commonwealth Games. Karen Pickering is available for booking to appear as an after dinner speaker at a private or corporate event through London based Talent Agency MN2S.

Born in 1971, Pickering represented her country at the European Junior Championships before making her international senior swimming debut in 1986, and competed in her first Olympic Games at Barcelona in 1992. In 1993 she competed in the first ever FINA Short Course World Championships in Palma de Mallorca where she won her first medal – gold in the 200m freestyle, thus becoming Britain’s first female swimming world champion.

A member of the British Swimming Squad from 1986 to 2005, Pickering amassed an impressive collection of medals, including 8 World Championship medals (4 of which are gold), 14 European Championship medals, 38 National Championship titles and 13 medals from the Commonwealth Games, including 4 gold. After such huge successes at the 2002 Commonwealth, earning two gold medals and a silver in front of her home crowd, she carried the English flag at the closing ceremony.

A celebrity talent with a long and prosperous career, Karen Pickering was awarded an MBE in the 1994 New Years Honours List, and is available to speak insightfully about her fruitful career, as well as holding the position of Sports Ambassador for Ipswich in Suffolk, chairs the British Athletes Commission and is a member of the boards of the English Institute of Sport and the BOA-Athlete Commission.

There are plenty of health benefits of swimming, according to science, and you should check out the many practical tips and advice on how to swim better.

Since her retirement in 2005, Pickering also appears regularly as a commentator for BBC 5 Live & on Channel 4, giving her insights into able bodied and disability swimming and diving events. Noticing the dearth of able swimmers in the UK, both adult and children, Pickering founded her swim schools in 20056 to counteract this, offering lessons to those at all levels. The programme also includes One2One programmes, so that a specific programme can be developed for a particular swimmer’s individual development.

In 2013, Pickering founded her own charity, The Karen Pickering SWIM Foundation, running alongside her Swim schools to benefit children who would otherwise be unable to afford swimming lessons. The system runs in Ipswich, Brighton and Norwich, and is also in the process of applying for more grants for swimming projects in the future. In addition to this, she has founded the Splash Awards, an annual black tie event which celebrates the achievements of able bodied and disabled swimmers, divers and waterpolo players.

Karen Pickering boasts the accolade of having won more championship medals for Britain that any other female swimmer and won the most Commonwealth medals for England of any female athlete in any sport. As such she is a talent in high demand for booking as a motivational after dinner speaker, speaking inspiringly about her strong career and her admirable business and charity ventures afterwards. Please get in touch with MN2S Agency to book Karen Pickering for an appearance at your next entertainment event.