Ellie Simmonds on emotional hunt for 'birth mum' after being given up at 3 months

Paralympic swimmer Ellie Simmonds. (Image: WaterAid / SWNS)

Paralympian and Strictly star Ellie Simmonds has had a big couple of years, culminating with a 30th birthday trip to Japan with her family in November.

“I got to go in Covid time with the Paralympics but we didn’t get to see anything. It was always the place that I wanted to go and explore. And to celebrate it for my 30th was even more wonderful.”

In fact, it was after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 when Ellie, who was adopted at three months old by parents Val and Steve Simmonds, retired and decided to track down her birth mother.

She let cameras follow her, resulting in the 2023 BAFTA-winning documentary Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy journey finding my birth mum,” says Ellie. “It was emotional, I cried. But that’s me, I’m an emotional woman, and it’s okay to show that.”

While Ellie grew up in a big happy home in the West Midlands, the youngest of five children, all adopted, she admits to wanting to know more about her roots. “You have all these questions about yourself that you’ve had for years and years and are finding out answers,” she says.

“There’s my love of horses, my curly hair, my eye colour. Just wondering where all that came from. It’s nice to have those answers and I know that’s only nature. I’ve got the majority of my traits from my parents Val and Steve. The majority of it is nurture as well. I see myself in my parents a lot.”

In the ITV documentary Ellie learns how children with achondroplasia - her type of dwarfism - were viewed in the 1990s. In an emotional scene she reads a shocking leaflet which said some people equated people with dwarfism with “evil and stupidity” and how they “traditionally had been involved in the circus”.

Ellie Simmonds teams up with WaterAid

Ellie came to understand her birth mother’s decision to give her up, as she had recently become a single parent.

“When I was reading the information that my birth mum got given 30 years ago, which explained about dwarfism, I understood,” says Ellie.

“It’s got a lot better with disability but in 2024 children in the care system are still seen as harder to place. We still need more education, to have more open conversations about disability, so hopefully more children are not stuck in the system, that they are adopted to loving families. They deserve love as much as any other child.”

Ellie, who won five Paralympic gold medals and broke several records during her swimming career, says she was surprised by the reaction to the documentary.

“You never know how people are going to view it. Not just the personal story but talking about disability and adoption in the care system.

“To have the reaction that I did has just been so wonderful and better than expected. I’ve had so many messages and people in the street come up and talk to me about it.

“For me what has been the most empowering and most amazing thing is that it has been able to help so many people.”

Ellie met her birth mother in February 2023 and they are still in touch. It turns out she had been following Ellie’s progress all along, after piecing together details as her swimming career brought her to the public eye.

Ellie first started swimming at five and she says it changed her life, which is why she is appearing in a new film Where There’s Water for the charity WaterAid.

“In the film I talk about what I’ve been able to achieve with my life where there has been water for me,” says Ellie. “I was in water every single day and it’s helped me be the person I am.

“But one in ten people in the world don’t have access to clean water. It’s the simple thing of keeping yourself clean.”

Ellie says not having clean water can stop children going to school for sanitary reasons - particularly for teenage girls as they reach puberty - and for women, lack of water can cause problems giving birth.

She has been an ambassador for the charity for over ten years and visited a WaterAid project in Uganda in 2014. “I met a wonderful lady called Sumaya. WaterAid gave her a water well and I saw how it changed her life.”

Ellie Simmonds has released childhood images of her learning to swim as part of WaterAid appeal (Image: WaterAid / SWNS)

Ellie started swimming competitively shortly after watching the 2004 Athens Olympics. “I was nine years old watching that, when I realised there was a Paralympic sport and people like myself could compete,” she says. “That was the changing point for me where I thought, ‘I want to be a Paralympian’.

“You never think your dreams are going to become reality. I was really lucky that four years later I went to my first games in Beijing.”

And not only did she compete but she won two gold medals at just 13 years old.

She had moved to Swansea with her mum when she was 11 to train. They would stay from Monday to Saturday morning and then drive back home to Birmingham at the weekend.

“There was a great swimming coach and a performance centre for paralympic sports,” says Ellie. “We had the whole support system around us. It was the right place. I loved my Swansea days. It’s got a massive place in my heart. Whenever I hear a Welsh accent it reminds me of my seven years living there.”

Since retiring, Ellie’s life has been busier than ever. “For so long I've been an athlete and confined to a swimming pool. Straight after retirement I did Strictly [in 2022 where she was partnered with Nikita Kuzmin], which was amazing. After that I did the Strictly tour and the documentary. Then this year I got the BAFTA and won [the ITV celebrity cooking show] Cooking With The Stars. I feel like every year there has been a lot of amazing stuff.”

She had a busy summer too covering the Olympics and Paralympics in Paris and was back on Celebrity Gogglebox with her Strictly friend, Radio 2 presenter Richie Anderson.

Plus there’s her own fashion range Dewey. “It’s for petite women, 5ft and under - I’m 4ft 1in. Growing up I know what it’s like when you go out and shop, you have to think ‘Can these clothes be altered?’. We’ve got leisurewear in Selfridges and online. It’s going down really well.”

And she has another documentary about disability in the pipeline, due on our screens this year. “Sometimes I forget to stop and just appreciate it, those pinch me moments,” says Ellie.

As well as her birthday trip to Japan, she’s learnt to scuba dive. “It’s opened my eyes even more to the ocean. To be underwater and to be at one with the fish and creatures under there. It’s just so peaceful.”

Support WaterAid’s ‘Where There’s Water’ winter appeal at wateraid.org/ellie