Madeline Groves

Madeline Groves

Personal information
Nickname(s) Mad Dog, Machine Gun
Citizenship Australia
Born 25 May 1995 (1995-05-25) (age 21)
Brisbane
Occupation swimmer[*]
Height 179 cm (5 ft 10 in)
Weight 66 kg (10 st 6 lb)
Sport
Sport swimming
Discipline Butterfly, Freestyle
Club St Peters Western Swim Club[*]
Coached by Michael Bohl[*]

Madeline Groves (born 25 May 1995) is an Australian competitive swimmer. She was the Australian national champion in the 200 m butterfly event in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games she was a bronze medallist in the 200 m butterfly event, and swam in the heats for the gold medal-winning Australian freestyle relay team. She was selected to represent Australia in the 100 m and 200 m butterfly, and 4 × 200 m freestyle relay events at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Biography

Madeline Groves was born in Brisbane, Queensland, on 25 May 1995.[1] She has two brothers.[2] She attended Wilston State Primary School and St Peters Lutheran College.[3] In 2014, she was an inaugural recipient of the Georgina Hope Rinehart Swimming Excellence Scholarship to study for a Bachelor of Social Science degree at Bond University on Queensland's Gold Coast.[4]

Groves learned to swim when she was a baby,[2] and started competitive swimming when she was twelve years old.[5] As a junior she won the 100 m and 200 m butterfly and 4 × 100 m medley events, and silver in the 50 m butterfly, at the 2010 Oceania Swimming Championships in Samoa. At the Junior Pan Pacific championships in Hawaii that year she came second in the 200 m butterfly and fifth in the 100 m butterfly events.[2] She took 2011 off, but returned to competitive swimming after she finished high school.[3] She is coached by Michael Bohl at St Peter's Western, where Mitch Larkin, Bronte Barratt, Madison Wilson and Grant Irvine also train.[3] She has known Bohl since 2008,[5] and he has been her coach since 2012. She has been nicknamed "Mad Dog" and "Machine Gun".[3]

In 2013, Groves became the national champion at the 2013 Australian Swimming Championships in the 200 m butterfly event.[1] During 2014, Groves suffered from debilitating pain in her shoulder and neck. This was traced to a clenched jaw, which has been treated by an orthodontist.[3] She defended her national title in the 200 m butterfly event at the 2014 Australian Swimming Championships, and the 2015 Australian Swimming Championships,[1] and in Adelaide in April 2016 at the 2016 Australian Swimming Championships,[6] where she was second in the 100 m butterfly.[3]

At the 2014 Commonwealth Games she was a bronze medallist in the 200 m butterfly event,[3] and swam in the heats for the gold medal-winning Australian freestyle relay team.[7] At the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia, she was 9th in the 200m butterfly and 11th in the 100 m butterfly events.[3] She swam in the heats of the medley relay,[8] in which the Australian team went on to win.[9]

In April 2016, Groves was selected to represent Australia in the 100 m and 200 m butterfly, and 4 × 200 m freestyle relay events at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.[10] This was her first Olympics.[3] She did not qualify for the semi-final in the 100 m butterfly,[11] but qualified fastest for the final of the 200 m butterfly. She won silver, finishing just three-hundredths of a second behind Spain's Mireia Belmonte.[12]

References

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