James Kirton interview: How Barnsley Olympian found greater purpose with Dame Kelly Holmes Trust after his life in the pool

He was a swimmer who lived the full range of emotions, from the hope of an Olympic experience to the despair of an injury-enforced retirement, only to emerge from it all a much stronger individual in his post-competitive life.

Looking back now, the 38-year-old from Barnsley appreciates that it all happened when he was so young, when he was still maturing.

Swimming defined him from an early age. He first took it up because “I was a naughty little brother and my parents said let’s get him into swimming,” he recalls.

Even when a coach suggested he try the Borough of Barnsley Swimming Club, he only went because his mother told him he had to.

But he was soon hooked and by age 10, the sport had consumed him.

“It was one of those sports in which I got a taste of success really early,” Kirton tells The Yorkshire Post. “I won a silver medal at the Yorkshire Championships and I kid you not, I remember looking at my medal thinking I feel really proud of myself. Up until that point I never had. But it made me realise I want more of this. It’s an individual sport where to a degree your success is determined on how much you’re willing to put in, to me that meant everything.”

Swimming is a lot of ‘time at task’ as they say in the trade and Kirton certainly put in the hours.

It was a mentality that took him to a world championship in Australia and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing when he was just 23, finishing 37th in the 200m breaststroke.

“Beijing didn’t go to plan for me,” he says, a hint of regret betrayed by the fact he proudly sports the Olympics rings tattoo between his shoulder blades.

“I got injured just before it. The gameplan was London 2012, Olympic medal, Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Get me Out of Here…

“No, I’m only joking, I did want to go to London, get a medal, and then retire, and unfortunately in December 2011 another muscle snapped off from somewhere else, a screw in the shoulder, and by January time I decided to hang up the goggles.”

Having been consumed by swimming for the best part of two decades, suddenly at 26, Kirton was without work and without a purpose. “At the time I was angry, I was upset, and all those emotions,” reflects Kirton.

But this is where luck played a part. He was given a job as a manager in a sports shop.

“I felt like I was one of the lucky ones, I walked into a pretty good job, I was working in Sheffield, everything was great and then suddenly I realised this bubble of the real world is very different to the bubble of swimming, and feeling young, naive and inexperienced in the real world, I didn’t really feel like I fit in,” he admits.

Did his mental health suffer?

“Again I was lucky that I had good unit of friends, coach and family around me so I did have that support.

“I was a bloke, and you don't ask for support as a bloke in 2011.”

That’s when another lifeline was thrown Kirton’s way, and this one he was mature enough to grab and to this day sees him drawing on his career as an Olympic swimmer.

“I was pining for the feeling I had with swimming and it came to a head one day when I met Adam Whitehead, who was a former swimmer and working for the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, we sat down and had a coffee.

"You have those moments in life where you go that’s it, that’s the moment, and that was the one for me.

“I said to him there and then that’s what I want to do, I want to get a kick out of life from helping people.”

A decade on, Kirton is one of a number of former athletes working up and down the country as a mentor for young and old as part of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust.

“What the Trust has done is it’s taught me that the skills I’ve got from swimming were actually transferable into real life,” says Kirton, whose enthusiasm for the role and for life is infectious.

“I don’t just have to help young people, I can help anyone. What it took for me to be great is what it takes for you to be great and the next person to be great.

“It’s been a whirlwind tour, I haven’t looked back, I get a kick out of it, I’m using the things that I did as a youngster to help these youngsters and it’s the best job ever.

“When I look back on my sporting career I had to be that person, I had to put my body through that, I had to be so intense to risk injury and achieve those heights.

“At the time it ended I was cross but when I look back now I think it was a pretty amazing journey.

“And those are the things I can talk about with young people.”

‘Enjoy the moments and be proud’

​Given all he has experienced in his swimming career, what advice would the long-since retired James Kirton have for those currently in the midst of their journeys.

“Keep the love for it, keep working hard," he says. “Stay injury free and as a 38-year-old dad of two, spend a little bit of time looking back and enjoying those moments while you’re in them.

“Because when I was swimming it was what’s next, what’s next? I never really sat back and went and thought ‘wow I’ve just been to a world championship and swam in the Rod Laver Arena, or European Championships and made a final’.

“So work hard, train like you’re nowhere near and spend some time reflecting and enjoying the moments and being proud of them.”