Today, Dame Sarah Storey is Britain’s most successful Paralympian, with 19 Paralympic gold medals to her name. But before the medals, she was a young swimmer perfecting her craft at Stockport’s Grand Central pool.
For Sarah, the journey to a successful athletic career started in a local pool. For another child, it might simply be the start of learning a skill for life, finding a sport they love or discovering what they’re capable of.
“I actually began training at Grand Central in 1993 when it opened,” Sarah recalls. She had just returned from the Barcelona Paralympic Games, where she won two gold medals at just 14 years old, and was excited to have a brand-new pool capable of supporting long-course training on her doorstep.
“It was really exciting, and I remember us all just being like, wow, we have our own 50-metre pool right here in the middle of Stockport.”
For a young swimmer with international ambitions, the opening of Grand Central created new opportunities to train locally and develop her skills.
For Sarah and the rest of the Stockport Metro swimmers, Grand Central also offered something transformative, with the addition of the wider fitness facilities needed to support developing athletes.
“I remember using the dance studio upstairs for our circuit training and land training,” she says. “As we got older, we were integrated into the gym itself as well.”
That combination of swimming, strength and conditioning, recovery and sports science was, Sarah believes, “ahead of its time.”
And her connection to Grand Central goes beyond being a swimmer. It wasn’t just where Sarah trained; it was also where she had her first job as a lifeguard.
From a young swimmer to an international athlete to a lifeguard, Grand Central has been woven into different stages of Sarah’s life.
Keeping the pool connected
Grand Central’s location in the heart of Stockport has always been part of its appeal. For Sarah, being able to access the pool and the wider facilities locally played an important role in her own development as an athlete.
More than 30 years later, her connection to the area continues through her work as Greater Manchester’s Active Travel Commissioner, where she has championed better connections between communities and places with opportunities to be active.
Sarah believes that making sure people can reach facilities such as Grand Central is just as important as the facilities themselves, highlighting the important role Stockport’s transport interchange plays in connecting people with the town centre and wider area.
For her, that means looking beyond the pool itself and considering the different barriers that can prevent people from using it.
“We always have to be really mindful of what those barriers are, and they’ll be different for different communities.”
Because a community facility can only serve a community if people can actually get to it.
A Stockport institution
Sarah’s story at Grand Central may have become an extraordinary one, but she is clear that the importance of a community leisure facility isn’t measured only in medals.
“Leisure facilities, sports facilities, they don’t just provide opportunities for those of us that are chasing medals,” she says. “It really is about the whole spectrum of sport, physical activity and health, sort of in the community and then all the way through.”
That is perhaps what makes Grand Central Pool’s story so special.
The pool that helped a young Sarah Storey develop as an international swimmer has continued to serve generations of Stockport residents. As the surrounding area has changed and Stockport itself has evolved, one thing has remained: the swimming pool.
“The stalwart of that facility is the swimming pool,” Sarah says. “And I think it’s a really wonderful story of just how long that sort of facility lasts and serves a community.”
A pool for everyone, not just champions
Not every child who starts swimming will go on to represent their country. And, as Sarah points out, they don’t need to. Learning to swim is about much more than competitive sport.
“I think it’s vital and we need to ensure children can do it much, much sooner.”
Sarah advocates for parents and carers to start embedding water confidence before formal lessons.She believes parents and carers can start building a positive relationship with water from the earliest years, helping children become comfortable and confident around it.
“The journey starts as soon as the child is born, and building that sort of love of water and a relaxed person will always swim better.”
You don’t have to be raising the next Olympian. You’re giving your child a skill for life, helping them become confident around water and potentially introducing them to an activity they’ll love.
For parents considering swimming lessons for their children, her message is simple: make it enjoyable.
Sarah believes children are more likely to learn when they associate swimming with fun, rather than seeing it simply as a series of lengths or a route towards competition.
Stockport strong
For Stockport, there is something particularly fitting about Sarah’s story.
A young Stockport swimmer stepped into her local pool, developed her skills, discovered what she was capable of and went on to make sporting history.
But the real legacy of Grand Central isn’t simply that one extraordinary career. It’s the thousands of children and families who have passed through its doors for more than 30 years.
Today, Grand Central continues to welcome children at the very beginning of their swimming journeys, helping them build confidence in the water, learn an essential life skill and, perhaps most importantly, discover whether swimming is the sport that makes them want to keep moving.
You never know where learning to swim might lead. But every sporting journey has to start somewhere. And for Sarah Storey, that somewhere was a Stockport pool.
