How to watch Team England’s swimmers at the Commonwealth Youth Games 2023

The waiting is finally over for Team England’s young swimmers as the action in the pool at the Commonwealth Youth Games kicks off tomorrow.

Trinidad and Tobago are hosting this year’s running of the competition with the action getting underway with a carnival themed opening ceremony at the Hasely Crawford Stadium on Friday evening.

More than 1000 young athletes will take part across the Games with athletes aged between 14 and 18 battling for medals on the Caribbean Islands.

The swimming events will take place in Trinidad with the National Aquatic Centre hosting 35 medal events throughout the four days of swimming from Sunday 6 – Wednesday 9 August.

It’s the seventh edition of the Games following on from the Bahamas Games in 2017 where Team England topped the swimming medal table with 21 medals.

That team included four athletes that went on to represent Team England at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games last year, including Olympic Champion Tom Dean – who won seven medals at the Sandwell Aquatics Centre.

This year’s cohort features a number of European Junior and European Youth Olympic Festival medallist that will be aiming to ‘bring it home’ at Trinbago 2023.

Team England’s swimmers flew out to Trinidad on Tuesday and have familiarised themselves with their surroundings before getting the opportunity to take to the pool on Friday.

‘Aiming for medals’

One of those swimmers has told Team England how she’s looking to become an inspiration to others at Trinbago 2023.

Skye Carter of Basildon Phoenix will become Team England’s second black swimmer to compete at the Commonwealth Youth Games once she hits the water – and she hopes that her efforts inspires others to start swimming.

She said: “I feel like black people are a bit underrepresented in swimming so to be up there representing and hopefully being an inspiration to other girls who are in the same boat as me.

“So to be a black swimmer representing Team England is quite good!

“Diversity is getting better, when I went to European Juniors, out of the top four from the 50m freestyle, three of them were black.

“I think the main goal for the competition would be to get some medals. It’s always the goal, isn’t it?

“I also like having a token of what I’ve achieved even if it is just to remember having a good time and the fact that I have got there.

“I was so shocked to be selected because I knew about other competitions that were happening this summer, but they sent emails out to a lot of people.

“But then when I got the confirmation, I was just like, ‘wow’. I was actually screaming, it was really, really surprising.”

Check out Team England’s full piece with Skye here.

How to watch and follow the competition

The entire competition will be streamed on Commonwealth Sports’ YouTube channel with the heats getting underway at 3pm each day and finals taking place at 11pm (BST time).

Full reports and reaction from the swimming events will be published on the Swim England website, swimming.org, throughout the four days of competition

There will also be regular updates on Team England performances on the Swim England social media channel – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – so why not give them a follow?

You can find the full schedule for the swimming events here and results from the competition will be available on the events website.

Images – Team England