Furber will join British Swimming from his current role as lead coach of British Cycling's Paralympic team, where he helped them top the medal table at both Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

He takes over at British Swimming from John Atkinson, who stepped down from the role earlier this year to become Swimming Canada's director of high performance.

Furber will now be tasked with building on the success of Britain's swimmers at the London 2012 Paralympic Games where they finished seventh on medal table with 39 medals, seven of which were gold.

"This is an incredibly exciting move for me," said Furber.

"I love disability sport and the opportunity to lead the sport of swimming, which has 148 opportunities to win Paralympic gold, is an incredible one that I could not ignore.

"I've been at British Cycling for 13 years and, while I'm sad to be leaving, I believe the opportunity with British Swimming is ideally suited.

"I feel the impact I can make will help the team to move up the medal table while building on the good work done by the previous performance director John Atkinson."

Furber is due to begin his role on May 13 this year and one of his key objectives will be to explore a number of different strategies aimed at delivering more gold medals at the Rio 2016 Paralympics.

His first major meet is set to be the 2013 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Swimming World Championships in Montreal in August, where Ellie Simmonds in likely to be one of Britain's biggest medal contenders.


Furber will take charge following a handover from former national performance director Tim Reddish, chairman of the British Paralympic Association (BPA), who has been in the role on an interim basis following the departure of Atkinson.

"We're delighted to welcome Chris to our successful Paralympic swimming team as the new national performance director," said British Swimming chief executive David Sparkes.

"Chris has been a critical factor in the success of the Paralympic cycling team, witnessed by all in London last summer, which embraced many of the characteristics of the successful Olympic cycling team.

"I'm sure Chris will bring with him some interesting and exciting ideas from cycling which will drive the future success of the Paralympic swimming team and build on the foundations laid by successive national performance directors."

British Swimming will now look to appoint a head coach to provide additional strength and depth to the Paralympic programme.

"I look forward to this exciting period as Chris leads the team to Rio," added Sparkes.

"Together we will now begin the search for a world class head coach to work alongside Chris as we adopt a similar leadership model to the one we've put in place across the Olympic swimming programme."

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