Katie Shanahan After European Title in 200 Back: “This Has Been the Hardest Year of my Career” ...Middle East

By Terin Frodyma on SwimSwam

2026 European Swimming Championships

Women’s 200 Backstroke – Final

Following her European Championship-winning 2:06.13 200 backstroke swim, Great Britain’s Katie Shanahan told European Aquatics that her swim, which was also a new British record in the event, taking down Gemma Spofforth‘s 2009 record time of 2:06.66, was not what she was expecting, given the path she had to take to get here.

“I really wasn’t expecting that,” Shanahan told European Aquatics. “I knew I was in a good place after the heats and semifinals, and tonight I really wanted to get my hand on the wall first. I had finished second at the European Championships three times… This has been the hardest year of my career. In January, I couldn’t swim and had to spend 10 days out of the water because I was in so much pain with my back.”

Shanahan added that an MRI showed “overload problems and inflammation” in one of her discs, a setback she adds made her ” start again from almost nothing.”

“An MRI showed overload problems and inflammation in a disc, so I had to start again from almost nothing,” Shanahan told European Aquatics. Then I was ill before trials, and in May I fractured my hand. There have been so many things going on this season. If you had told me in January that I would swim this time, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

This injury not only put her chances of competing at the European Championships in jeopardy, but also threatened to keep her out of the recently concluded Commonwealth Games, an opportunity to represent her home country of Scotland in Glasgow.

According to a report from SportFirst in Scotland, Shanahan said that heading into the British Championships last month, she had no preparation, but was determined to earn a spot on the Scottish team for the Commonwealth Games.

“I didn’t have any preparation at all going into it. I only had about a couple of weeks of training behind me, and I knew that I wasn’t going to do much. But just to make that team, like that’s all I had to do was be top spot and make the team.” Shanahan said in the report from SportFirst. “I had so much support from the sportscotland institute of sport, to be honest, I actually wouldn’t have properly been able to swim at trials without Jesse as my physio, who was absolutely amazing, and I had a lot of psychology support as well.”

Shanahan went on to win the 200 backstroke at the British Championships in 2:09.89, and later finished 2nd at the Commonwealth Games in 2:08.54. Her best time entering this final in Paris sat at 2:07.45 from the 2023 World Championships, 1.32 seconds slower than her record-breaking swim today.

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