“Not everyone is going to be an Olympic and world champion but there are elements that are key for every breaststroker be they club swimmers or elite” – Jon Rudd, swim coach to Olympic 100m breaststroke champion, Ruta Meilutyte.
When Jon Rudd first met 12-year-old Ruta Meilutyte they communicated through sign language.
She was raw and in Plymouth under sufferance, a young girl who was not yet a teenager, far from her Lithuania home
It was her father who wanted her to join Rudd’s programme at Plymouth Leander but as time went on and Ruta got a grasp on English, her homesickness gradually went and the partnership between the two saw both of them enter uncharted territory.
Just three years after Ruta met Rudd, the then 15-year-old was the Olympic 100m breaststroke champion.
She added the world title a year later in Barcelona, as well as 50m silver, and was second at last year’s worlds in Kazan, Russia.
Not everyone is going to be an Olympic and world champion but there are elements that are key for every breaststroker be they club swimmers or elite.
Rudd says: “If you compare Alex Dale Oen to Cameron Van Der Burgh to Daniel Gyurta to Adam Peaty, you have got completely different stuff going on there so with breaststroke first of all between…
