Simon Burnett

Simon Andrew Burnett (born 14 April 1983) is an English former competition swimmer who represented Great Britain in the Olympics and European championships, and England in the Commonwealth Games.

He formerly held the British Records in the 100 and 200-metre freestyles.

Burnett began competing at an international level in 2000 at the 3 Nations Junior International.

Burnett attended and competed for the University of Arizona in the United States from 2001-2006, utilizing a redshirt leading up to the 2004 Summer Olympics for his 2003 collegiate season.

At the ASA National Championships, he won gold in the 50-meter backstroke in 2001 and 2002.

His television debut was in 2002 at the Manchester Commonwealth Games, where he competed in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay and won a bronze medal.

The following Olympic Games saw Burnett finish 7th in the 200-metre freestyle, and he competed in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay team, which finished 4th, nearly grabbing bronze medals.

The British trials for the Games had been a great success for Simon, in which he won a silver medal in 100-metre freestyle and a gold medal in the 200-metre freestyle, despite having broken his wrist in a cycling accident in Arizona two months previously.

He was now emerging as an elite British swimmer.

He first swam at Wycombe District Swimming Pool from a very young age, and soon joined the Wycombe District Swimming Club, where he remained until 2003.

He was coached by Bob Pay and his move to John Hampden, which was local to the Wycombe Sports Centre at which he trained, helped him focus further on swimming.

In 2003, with the help of Pay, Burnett won a sports scholarship at the University of Arizona to study business.

On the advice of Pay, Burnett switched to swim freestyle in 2003 and began to excel.

Swimming for the University of Arizona, Burnett competed in the American NCAAs and won gold in his first year in the 200-yard freestyle and in 2005.

2005 was probably his best year yet, returning to England as well for the ASA National Championships.

He won three gold medals in the 50-metre, 100-metre, and 200-metre freestyle, all of which were new British records.

In the United States, he also broke the 17-year-old record for the 200-yard freestyle set by Matt Biondi at 1:33.03; Burnett swam a 1:32.22.

At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Burnett competed in the 200-metre freestyle and won silver with a time of 1:47.38, beaten by team mate Ross Davenport, who swam a personal best of 1:47.29.

He was also part of the relay team in the 4×100-metre freestyle, finishing fourth, with the South African favourites taking gold.

However, the most sensational race was the 4×200-metre freestyle, when the English team won the gold medal, nudging Scotland into second place and Australia into third.

The next day, he won individual gold in the 100-metre freestyle, leaving the South African entrants Ryk Neethling and Roland Schoeman into second and third respectively.

With a time of 48.57 seconds, he set a Commonwealth Games record and broke his own British record by eleven one-hundredths of a second.

Before the Commonwealth Games had ended, Burnett was off to Atlanta for the 2006 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships.

Burnett finished third in the 50-yard freestyle, second in the 4×50-yard freestyle relay, and first in the 4×50-yard medley for the Wildcats.

He won the NCAA title in the 200-yard freestyle and broke the U.S. Open Record with a time of 1:31.20.

In 2007 signed a sponsorship deal with Nike.

Simon was born at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, the second of the three sons of Ray Burnett and Melanie Verhoeven.

He lived in the Oxfordshire village of Chinnor as a child, and then moved a few miles to Tetsworth, attending Lord Williams's School in Thame, Oxfordshire.

After completing his GCSEs, he went to John Hampden Grammar School, in High Wycombe, to study chemistry, biology, and physics at A-level.

Burnett represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 4×100-metre freestyle relay swimming event.

In March 2009 he became the patron of the newly formed Thame Swimming Club, located at Lord Williams's Upper School, in Thame.

He comes and meets the swimmers and helps with training whenever he is in the UK.

In 2010, Burnett became patron of the Oxfordshire charity, UCARE [Urology Cancer Research and Education.

Simon has been a committed advocate for UCARE, thinking strategically about supporting the charity's twin aims – to raise funds for research and to raise awareness of urological cancers – dedicating his medal to UCARE at the Commonwealth Games and attending events whenever he can.

In June of 2015, Burnett joined the Pacific Tigers men's swimming and diving team as an assistant coach.

Burnett's NCAA and U.S. Open record stood for 10 years until Townley Haas of the University of Texas broke it with a time of 1:30.46 at the 2016 NCAA Championships in the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, the same venue in which Burnett broke the record a decade prior.