My aspirations are to make the 2012 Olympics in London, my goal is to move forward and make sure I remain one of the Irish swimmers who make the team again. But starting at the beginning because this is my biography... I started swimming when I was nine years old in a local swimming club called new northern. It was a little club which my friend Emma Campbell asked me to go along to with her. Its interesting looking back on it now because all my friends used to beat me and all got moved up into higher squads before me, yet I stuck with it and at the age of twelve I won my first Ulster championship medal. My coach Pierse McGuigan-forecasted to my parents and myself then that he saw a talent in me and thought I could achieve a lot in the sport. The real reality of training at 5 o’clock now had a meaning, when I started to continually win competitions and break records I started to believe in myself that I could do whatever I set my mind to.

View full biography  |  Loughborough Univserty Swimming

AIB Photojournalism Awards 2009 

'Into the Blue' - Irish Olympic swimmer Melanie Nocher, at the Ireland Team hotel in advance of the FINA World Swimming Championships, Rome 2009. Awarded 3rd prize in the 'Individual Study' category at the AIB Photojournalism Awards 2009. Burlington Hotel, Dublin. Picture credit: Brian Lawless / SPORTSFILE