Mie Nielsen was born with swimming in her blood.
Her father Benny won silver in the 200m butterfly at the 1988 Olympics while her mother Lone Jensen competed at the World Championships in 1978.
Not surprisingly, Mie inherited a love of the water and she soon showed potential, swimming under the watchful eye of Eyleifur Johannesson at Aalborg from the age of 11.
At that time the youngster was competing in all freestyle distances from 50m to 1500m as well as the individual medley at both 200m and 400m.
Despite not specialising in backstroke she became Danish champion over 100m in 2010 and a year later she competed at the World Championships in Shanghai, narrowly missing the semis in the 50m backstroke. After this she turned her focus to freestyle and backstroke.
In the past 12 months alone, Mie has clinched 100m backstroke bronze at the 2015 World Championships in Kazan as well as 100m gold and dash silver at the European Championships in London. She is also a valuable member of the Danish relay teams.
It was all a natural progression, says coach Eyleifur.
“She is built like a freestyle backstroker,” he says. “Her body length, shoulders, strong kicking. It comes most naturally to her, free and back: she just has really good rhythm from the start,…
