From Bow to Paris: Diver Scarlett Mew Jensen heads to the 2024 Olympics
Born and raised in Bow, Scarlett Mew Jensen was one of the first to train in the Olympic Park’s London Aquatic Center. Now, she’s heading to the 2024 Olympic Games.
In the 2024 Olympics, Bow local Scarlett Mew Jensen will jump, flip and dive for the gold. Jensen is competing in the women’s 3-meter synchronised diving event on July 27th, the first day of the games.
Jensen is warm and chatty, with a big smile and killer eyebrows. She specialises in 3-metre-dives, where every millisecond counts. But the 22-year-old has been preparing for this moment for over a decade, starting when she attended Bonner Primary School on Roman Road. She has lived in Tower Hamlets all her life.
‘My family all were very sporty, there wasn’t very much sitting on the sofa, it was what can we fill the evening with?’ she says. From age seven an energetic Jensen was practising dance, gymnastics and diving.
At age 11, talent scouts came to Bonner and Jensen’s PE coach referred her to them to train at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. ‘She spoke to my mum and said, I know it’s really far but I think she’d be great at it and they’ve asked me to recommend people.’
The centre was a gruelling two-hour trek in the days before the Overground. Jensen reluctantly committed to the four-hour round trips to practice, accompanied by her mum.
Later on, Jensen’s mum would meet her at school to swap her school bag and diving bag for the trip, always making sure to pack her dinner. ‘My mum’s been a very strong point of support for this whole journey, my whole family as well but my mum has bent over backwards and got me to where I am,’ Jensen said, ‘I can’t really thank her enough.’
London hosted the Olympics in 2012, and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London was built for the purpose. ‘There were points where we had it on TV but we could still hear it, it was so local,’ Jensen said.
A tiny 11-year-old Jensen was featured in a promo video for the 2012 games and got to see fellow diver Tom Daley, who she now trains alongside. ‘My mum chucked down my t-shirt and was like ‘Tom, Tom can you sign my daughter’s t-shirt she just started diving!’’
Meanwhile, the distance and intense atmosphere in Crystal Palace was taking its toll. ‘I’d start arguments with my family because they were basically like you’re too good to stop. And I’d be like, well I don’t care because it’s horrible,’ Jensen said.
The London Olympics sparked a renewed interest in British athletes and left the London Aquatics Center (LAC) in Stratford open for use. Jensen’s parents met with coaches at the LAC the following year and agreed to transfer their still reluctant daughter there to train around age 13.
At the LAC, Jensen met her diving coach David Jenkins, also the long-time coach of Olympic gold medalist Tom Daley. She began training alongside Daley and other stellar athletes. More than a coach, Jenkins became a mentor, even though Jensen was closed off to him at first.
‘The first two years, were basically me not communicating because I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to when I was younger,’ Jensen said, ‘It took six years [for Jenkins] to break that down, and I’m a completely different person and a completely different athlete now.’
Jensen uncovered serious love and talent for diving under Jenkins’ tutelage. She combined the strength from gymnastics with the elegance she’d learned from dance and committed to diving entirely. Socially, the new club was a different world. ‘I was excelling in it,’ she said, ‘I found a lot of friendships there and that community was just really special to me.’
The new location was a bonus: ‘The aquatics centre is such a beautiful pool and I get to train in it every day. There’s so much history and it’s so iconic,’ she said.
In 2019, Jensen won gold at the British Championships at age 17. The same year she won 19th place at the World Aquatics Championships.
In 2020, a 19-year-old Jensen competed in the preliminaries for the delayed Tokyo Olympics. She’d been dreaming of the Olympics since the London 2012 games were held on her doorstep – winning the nationals had shown her it was possible.
But the Tokyo games were nothing like the dream. Jensen dived alone, with no crowd or family to support her, after extensive testing and isolation to follow COVID regulations. She didn’t make it through to the next round. Jenkins coached her through the disappointment, assuring her she was early in her career and that the Paris Olympics would be her games.
A few short months later, Jenkins passed away due to sudden adult death syndrome at age 31. Jensen continued pushing through and competing, but a serious shoulder injury soon after forced her to get surgery and pause diving.
The loss of her mentor was a huge blow. ‘He is still an incredible part of my journey, I take him with me everywhere,’ she said, ‘He didn’t just shape me as an athlete, he shaped me as a person. That was what he stood by, out of all of this, I want you to be an amazing diver but I really want you to be an amazing person.’
Dealing with grief and being unable to practice her passion, Jensen was forced to take time to recover and began attending therapy. ‘Looking back [the injury] was actually a really big blessing in disguise,’ she said, ‘I came out the other side this completely different person again.’
Now Jensen considers therapy a crucial part of her training, on par with keeping her body in shape. She attends regularly and credits the work with helping her process grief as well as managing her nerves.
‘When I was young, I was a really nervous competitor,’ she said, ‘I use the nerves to my advantage now. Because obviously, alongside nerves is adrenaline. So they kind of go hand in hand if you know how to work them out.
Working with her new coach Jane Figueiredo, Jensen has been training full speed ahead up until this current Olympics season. From training six days a week to making lifestyle choices that keep her healthy and prepared, diving is a lifestyle more than a job.
‘Social life is really limited,’ she said, ‘It does consume my life, it just really takes over.’ Jensen is supported still by her best friend from Bonner, who is joining her at the Olympics this year – the two share a love of show tunes. As for love life? ‘For me love life doesn’t really exist, it never really has. I’ve just gone on this train of diving,’ she laughs.
The 2024 Olympics lead-up was not without its setbacks. After qualifying for the games, Jensen suffered a partial back fracture two months ago and thought she might have to drop out entirely.
Following years of anticipation, the road to recovery was again just as psychological as it was physical. ‘This massive thing happened and it just crumbled,’ she said, ‘but my goal has never changed, my dream is to get an Olympic medal.’
Although she won’t be able to compete in the solo dives, she has had a near-perfect recovery and will be able to compete in the synchronized diving event with her partner Yasmin Harper.
Harper and Jensen are a formidable team that has shot from underdogs to serious competitors in just a few short years, winning medals in the British Championships and National Cups with barely any training together. They’ve become known for sporting matching manicures, thanks to Harper’s amateur nail technician skills – the design for the big day is still a secret.
As Jensen prepares to jump this year, she’ll carefully choose the song needed, a technique her late coach Jenkins helped her develop. It might be anything from rap, to house, to show tunes or classical music, depending on how she needs to tweak her mood.
In the audience, her friends and family will be there to support her, and at home, the next generation of British divers will be watching.
Scarlett Mew Jensen will compete with Yasmin Harper in the 2024 Olympics Women’s Synchronised 3m Springboard Final on Saturday 27th of July 2024, 10:00 GMT.
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