Ellie Simmonds's Biography

Who is Ellie Simmonds?

Ellie was born on 11 November 1994 and is the youngest of five children.

She was born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism.

Keen on swimming from a very early age, she went on to become a multi-gold medal winning Paralympic swimmer.

At the age of thirteen she was the youngest British athlete at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, and won gold medals in the 100m and 400m freestyle events.

In 2012 she won gold medals in the 400m freestyle and the 200m individual medley at the Summer Paralympics in London and won a further gold in the 200m Individual Medley at Rio 2016.

In addition, Ellie Simmonds has won ten World Championship titles.

At the age of 13 she won BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year and a year later, at just 14 years old, she became the youngest person ever to receive an MBE. She was awarded the OBE in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to paralympic sport.

After retiring from competitive swimming in 2020, Ellie became a presenter both for BBC Sport and also for non sports programmes like the BBC One documentary Ellie Simmonds: A World Without Dwarfism?

You can read / listen to her Desert Island Discs. A notable inclusion was Elton John's Rocket Man.

In 2022, Ellie Simmonds became one of the celebrities on Strictly Come Dancing.

She was paired with Nikita Kuzmin. They were the sixth couple to be eliminated.