2024 Swammy Awards: British Coach of the Year — Steven Tigg
01/06/2025 03:27 PM
By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
See all of our 2024 Swammy Awards here.
Steven Tigg continued to push the University of Stirling program to new heights in his seventh season as the head coach. Seven athletes training at Stirling made Great Britain's Paris Olympic roster—a year after Tigg put five swimmers onto the 2023 World Championship roster. Tigg was named to the British Olympic team's coaching staff for the second straight Games.
Tigg's swimmers excelled in Paris, highlighted by Duncan Scottand Jack McMillanearning gold as part of the men's 4×200 freestyle relay. McMillian swam on the prelims relay, while Scott—the headliner of the Stirling program for years now—teamed with Matt Richards, James Guy, and Tom Dean to defend their relay gold from Tokyo. With their swim, Great Britain became the first nation in Olympic history to win back-to-back relay golds with the same quartet.
Scott, who has worked with Tigg since childhood, also repeated as the Olympic silver medalist, posting the second-fastest swim of his career, a 1:55.31, three-hundredths from the British record he set in Tokyo. His medals in Paris made him Britain's most decorated Olympic swimmer and Scotland's most decorated Olympian.
Scott skipped the 2024 Short Course World Championships and closed out his season with the 2024 World Cup. He finished third in the men's standings on the three-stop tour, beating Pieter Coetze by five-tenths of a point. On the circuit, Scott set three British records, highlighted by his 1:39.83 in the 200 freestyle, where he became the fourth man to break 1:40 in the event and is now the fifth-fastest performer in history after Luke Hobson's world record in Budapest. Scott's other British records came in the 400 freestyle (3:34.46) and 100 IM (51.14).
Scott wasn't the only one of Tigg's swimmers to break a British record this season. Angharad Evansshattered the women's 100 breaststroke record in May at the 2024 AP Race International, bringing both her lifetime best and the record sub-1:06 for the first time. Evans had qualified for her debut Games the month before. She placed sixth in the Olympic 100 breaststroke final, a place behind fellow Stirling swimmer Katie Shanahan's fifth place in the 200 backstroke.
Shanahan's fifth-place effort (2:07.53) was less than a tenth from her personal best and the highest individual finish for a female Stirling-trained swimmer. Lucy Hopeearned fifth and seventh-place finishes as part of the women's 4×200 free and 4×100 free relay teams.
Other Stirling swimmers on the Olympic roster included Keanna MacInnes, who finished 9th/16th in the 100/200 butterfly, and Kathleen Dawson, who took 18th in the 100 backstroke.
Having developed the University of Stirling into a destination for the nation’s top professional swimmers, Tigg has forged a reputation for consistently being one of the best coaches in Great Britain. It's led to recognition in the form of awards—Tigg was named Aquatics GB's Swimming Coach of the Year and he and fellow Stirling coach Bradley Hay shared the Scottish Coach of The Year honors. Beyond the awards, his success in growing Stirling's program was one of the factors in his being appointed as the Aquatics GB Swimming Head Coach.
Honorable Mention:
– David Hemmings, Loughborough: The year started strong for David Hemmings' group of athletes as Freya Colbertand Laura Stephensbecame world champions at the 2024 World Championships in Doha. Colbert won the 400 IM, while Stephens took home the crown in the 200 butterfly. Colbert was back on the podium after the women's 4×200 freestyle relay as she teamed with Hope and her training partners Abbie Wood and Medi Harris to win silver. Hemmings put seven athletes onto Great Britain's Olympic team and like Tigg, was named a coach for the second-straight Games. In Paris, Hemmings' swimmers Colbert and Max Litchfieldboth finished fourth—just off the podium—in the 400 IM. Litchfield set a British record of 4:08.85 as he touched less than two-tenths behind the bronze medalist. At the 2024 Short Course World Championships, Wood claimed double bronze in the 200/400 IM, setting a national record of 2:02.75 in the former.
PREVIOUS WINNERS
- 2023 – Ryan Livingstone
- 2022 – Dave Hemmings
- 2021 – Dave McNulty
- 2020 – Dave McNulty
- 2019 – Mel Marshall
- 2018 – Steven Tigg
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