By Grace Wood

Copyright bbc

Two years later, Doris was offered the chance to try again, this time at the 1938 British Empire Games in Sydney, the forerunner to the Commonwealth Games.

She travelled to Australia alongside other members of the Great Britain team, and, with their boat, the SS Ormonde, due to take more than four weeks to get there, it gave Doris and her colleagues plenty of time to keep up with their training – sometimes using unusual methods.

“They were made to train at the back of the boat in open sea with a shark-proof cage they’d lower down,” Damian explains.

“They’d swim in it as the boat was going along, and the Olympic diving team would dive off the side of the ship.”

As Doris’s grandson goes on to say, this approach did have its risks.

“There’s one particular tale she told us: one of the high divers was diving off the side of the boat and grandma was transitioning, coming out of the shark cage across to the boat.

“She turned around and thought she saw a fin, and she did see a fin, but she thought it was a shark and she’s like, ‘shark, shark!’.

“The diver had just surfaced and she swam over to him and she was petrified. Apparently, she grabbed hold of him but she nearly drowned.

“It turned out it was a porpoise that had been swimming close by.”

Once in Sydney, Doris went on to victory: winning two swimming golds in the 220 yard breaststroke and 3×110 yard medley.