OM James Guy has been awarded an MBE on the New Year's Honours List

James Guy has recently been awarded an MBE, which stands for ‘Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ and is the third highest ranking award on the New Year's Honours list. James was awarded for his services to swimming.  

James attended both the Prep and Senior School from 2008-2014 and was a swimming scholar during his time at Millfield. He was coached by OM and Director of Swimming, Euan Dale, who joined James at the Olympics in Tokyo in July 2021 as part of the GB coaching team. Euan saw James win two silver medals at the 2016 Olympics Games in Rio and then three medals in the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo.   

James has progressed from starting right at the very beginning of the sport, racing at Somerset County Championships to being a double Olympic Gold Medalist and world record holder. At the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, he won two gold medals and a silver medal for Team Great Britain in the swimming relay races. In the mixed 4 x 100-meter medley relay, they smashed the world record and broke a European record in the men’s 4 x 200-meter freestyle relay race. This brings James’ total career Olympic medals to five.   

At the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, James won gold in the 4 x 100m medley relay, silvers in the 100m butterfly, 4 x 200m freestyle relay and 4 x 100m freestyle relay, and bronzes in the 200m butterfly and mixed 4 x 100m medley relay. James was joined by fellow OMs Cameron Kurle in the silver medal-winning 4 x 100m freestyle relay team and by Brodie Williams in the 4 x 100m medley relay to clinch gold.

He says, “Within three months I’d achieved PBs being coached by Euan; he became a big brother to me, and I had massive respect for him. He worked me hard, he pushed me hard, and we had a good relationship as well. I’ve been around Millfield for a long time and Euan Dale, Joel Finck, Emma Collins originally, Helen Gouldby, all of the staff here at Millfield really did help me massively and without them I wouldn’t be where I am today - World Champion and Olympic Medalist - so it is down to them as Millfield is where my dream began.”  

James defined the word success as “being happy with the outcome, whatever that may be. As long as you are happy with the end result, and you’ve done your best, then for me, that’s success.”  

A huge congratulations to James for this amazing achievement!