AIMEE WILLMOTT is well versed in battling against adversity. In 2017, the Teessider suffered a fractured spine, as well as injuries to her ribs and knee, and was forced to relocate from London to Stirling when her previous training programme was scrapped at barely a second’s notice. The following spring, she achieved the greatest success of her swimming career when she won gold at the Commonwealth Games.

So, while things haven’t exactly gone to plan in the year-and-a-half since she stood on top of the podium on Australia’s Gold Coast, the 26-year-old sees every setback as a challenge.

Five months after her Commonwealth success, Willmott’s name was controversially omitted from the list of athletes on British Swimming’s 2018-19 World Class Performance Programme. No place on the performance programme, no funding via UK Sport. No wonder Willmott has had to dig deep into her pockets, not to mention her reserves of mental resolve, to ensure she has been able to claim a place on the British squad that will compete at the World Swimming Championships in South Korea that begin this weekend.

“The last swimming year has been a non-funded year,” said Willmott, who will compete in both the 200m Individual Medley and her preferred event, the 400m IM, in Gwangju. “That’s a bit annoying and a bit rubbish because I won a gold medal at my last major championships and have continued to swim well in the last year.

“I feel like I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me, and people have said they can’t understand why I’m not on the list, but that’s how it is and there’s nothing I can do about it now. It was a hard thing to get my head around at first, but I’ve put it behind me and got on with things.”

But as an independent adult with bills to pay, how has Willmott survived without any financial support from the swimming authorities?

“It’s been tough,” she said. “But when you’re involved in a sport like swimming, you probably always have at the back of your mind that something like this could happen. So you try to save a bit of your funding through the years so you’ve got a bit of a safety cushion.

“Thankfully, I did that, so I had a few reserves I could use to help me get through. I had enough to just about cover my rent, so after that, it was really just a case of scraping together enough to live on. Let’s just say I don’t go out much at the moment!

“I’ve done a bit of work for Funkita (a swimwear company), and I’ve also been doing a bit of coaching and running a few swimming workshops. Luckily, I haven’t had to go and get a job that’s completely detached from swimming. That would have been much more difficult. Everything I’ve done has tied in pretty nicely with my training.”

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And through having to reassess her financial situation in the last 12 months, Willmott has also been able to gain a different perspective on her swimming.

Having made her senior competition debut at the 2010 Commonwealth Games when she was just 17, Willmott has spent almost a decade devoting herself to the pool.

But while she was constantly demanding more of herself as a teenager, she is now able to adopt a much more mature and sustainable viewpoint. She remains as ambitious as ever, viewing the forthcoming World Championships as a great opportunity to add to her medal haul, but no longer regards her swimming as the be all and end all of her existence.

“I guess you could say I’ve mellowed,” said Willmott. “I’m still as competitive as ever, and I still want to win things and achieve PBs, but the last year has probably shown me more than ever that there’s a life out there beyond my swimming.

“I’m extremely proud of what I’ve done, and I wouldn’t really want to change anything, but I maybe look back a bit now and think, ‘Why were you so hard on yourself?’ I finished ninth at my first World Championships, and was absolutely devastated at missing out on the final by a place. I didn’t even want to think about that experience for years, but I look back now and think, ‘Why didn’t you enjoy it more? You did really well’.”

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She has two Olympic appearances under her belt, and is on track to make a third in Tokyo next summer, although she admits that continuing to 2020 was not part of the plan that was initially formulated in the wake of the 2016 Games in Rio.

“I didn’t really think I’d still be going now, to be honest,” she said. “After the last Olympics, the plan was to get to the next Commonwealths and then probably call it a day. But I’m enjoying the training so much, and the performances are still there, so I don’t really feel like calling it a day anytime soon.

“I want to do well at the Worlds, but I’m sort of looking at them as a bit of a bonus. I didn’t think I’d still be doing this, so what will be, will be.”

Not, however, that Willmott will be settling for a sub-standard showing in Korea. The 200m IM will help ease her into the competitive environment, before she targets a place in the final of her preferred event over 400m.

“I want to get close to my PB, and if I do that, it should make me pretty competitive,” said the former Middlesbrough ASC swimmer. “I think there are opportunities there for me.

“Hannah (Miley) isn’t there this time, so that gives things a bit of a different feel from a British perspective, and with it being the year before the Olympics, things are always in a bit of a state of flux. You get people dipping in and out a bit, trying different things. The first job is to try and make the final. If I can do that, then we’ll see how things go from there.”