It could be a huge summer for Katie Shanahan with the European Championships in Paris starting just days after swimming at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games wraps up, and she want to look back on both as a champion
This month, many of the world’s top athletes will travel to Scotland compete at Glasgow 2026. Now aged 22, Katie has quickly become comfortable on the biggest stage after winning two bronze medals on her Commonwealth Games debut at Birmingham 2022 and competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. And she is happy putting the pressure on herself to win gold this summer.
She said: “I’d love to come away this summer being Commonwealth champion or European champion, whatever that is, like I guess I do put a lot of pressure on myself because I do want to be the best.
"I think in Birmingham four years ago, it was very unexpected to have got those bronze medals, I was hoping to literally go into the competition hoping to make some finals and PBs, and then to come away with two bronze medals was pretty surreal. I would love to just develop on that this year.”
Although Katie now has big plans for this summer, earlier this year she she faced with a race against time to qualify for Glasgow 2026. Towards the end of 2025, Katie suffered an injury to her back, which heavily impacted her preparations for the British Championships in April, an event that would provide athletes with an opportunity to qualify for the Commonwealth Games.
The injury to Katie’s back followed a tough 2025, where the Glaswegian contracted an illness that impacted her performances at the World Championships. Despite an unfortunate run of injuries, Katie stayed resolute, arriving at the British Championships where, she delivered when it mattered.
She won gold in the 200m Backstroke and qualified for Team Scotland. Katie explained: “I didn’t have a preparation at all going into it. I only had about a couple of weeks of training behind me, and I knew that I wasn’t going to do much. But just to make that team, like that’s all I had to do was be top spot and make the team.”
Throughout Katie’s journey in sport, and recent injuries, she has been supported by the sportscotland Institute of sport. This has included support on physical preparation, physiotherapy, physiology, psychology, performance lifestyle and performance nutrition.
Katie was helped through her recent back injury by sportscotland experts. Originally developing the injury at the end of 2025, as a result of a heavy competition schedule, a quick, but thorough rehabilitation process was required with Glasgow 2026 on the horizon.
To support Katie through this rehabilitation programme, Jesse Costello, sportscotland physiotherapist worked closely with her. Although Katie’s injury meant that she would have require to have time out of water, focusing on gym-based recovery. Her injury provided time to address potential imbalances within her movements, conducting several tests, to create a programme that would strengthen Katie’s hips and spine, transferring into her performances in the swimming pool, Jesse said:
“For me there was a few ranges of motion tests that I could do on the bed. Looking at how her hips move, her lower back moves and how the mid and thoracic back moves, where that is all connected, especially in the water where you need to be able to achieve those positions for your streamline and for your tumble turns. It is important to have the ability to access that range.”
“We are very lucky that we have some testing modalities up our sleeves, in terms of the force frame and force plates, to just give us some harder numbers.”
Before Katie’s injury, she would usually see Jesse once every second week. However, this was heightened to up to three times a week throughout her rehabilitation process. This included working as part of a multi-disciplinary team that closely supported Katie and her coaches remotely, when attending a three week long altitude training camp, which would help prepare swimmers for the busy season.
Reflecting on the support that she received, Katie said: “I had so much support from the sportscotland institute of sport, to be honest, I actually wouldn’t have properly been able to swim at trials without Jesse as my physio, who was absolutely amazing, and I had a lot of psychology support as well.”
