Karen Pickering

Karen Pickering (Brighton, 19 december 1971) is a former freestyle swimmer from Great Britain, specialised in the freestyle, which made its international debut in 1986. In that year, the only 14-year-old pupil of trainer-coach Dave Champion for the first time selected to her homeland to represent the European Youth Championships. In the years that followed, the most successful swimmer Pickering grew to that GB .

Her international breakthrough polite Pickering in 1993, when the swimmer of the Ipswich Swimming Club at the first and experimental Fina short course World Championships (25 m) in Palma de Mallorca won the gold medal in the 200 m freestyle. Thus, she became the first British world champion in swimming.

Her Palmares mentions further under the four participations in Olympic Gamesmore: ' Barcelona 1992 ', ' Atlanta 1996 ', ' Sydney 2000 ' and ' Athens 2004 ', and a gold individual medal in the Commonwealth Games, in 1994 in the 100 m freestyle (56,20). Pickering was a more or less fixed over ten years choice in the British relay teams (4 x 100 and 4 x 200 m freestyle relay), those at virtually every international tournament participated to the medals.