The 15-year-old was one of the stars at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, where, despite the fact that she was the youngest British athlete to compete in China [she was 13 at the time], Simmonds claimed two gold medals.

Since those Games, Simmonds has become a true superstar in Britain, including winning 2008 BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award and becoming the youngest person ever to be given an MBE, receiving it when she was just 14.

However, despite Simmonds’ celebrity status at such a young age, Tim Reddish, who is also the performance director of British Disability Swimming, believes she will take everything in her stride.

Reddish said: "Ellie is a really special talent and there is no doubt that she will be the poster girl for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

"She is already a house-hold name in Britain and instantly recognisable to the main-stream public because of the amount of media coverage she receives.

"But if anyone can cope with the pressure at such a young age, it is definitely Ellie.

"She has such a good head on her and although she is aware that there will be pressure on her to perform in 2012 in front of a home-crowd, it is not something that she will be overly concerned with.

"Ellie is just so focused and so determined to keep improving all the time that she won’t let anything distract her from training hard and being the best that she can be and when Ellie is at her best, she is very difficult to stop."

Reddish also revealed that he is delighted with the current standard of British Disability Swimming ahead of the 2012 Games.

At the Beijing 2008 Paralympics, Britain finished the swimming medal table in fourth place with an impressive 41 medals, 11 of which were gold, and have recently produced strong performances at the IPC Swimming European Championships in Rijeka and the IPC World Short Course Championships in Rio.

Reddish (pictured) said: "It is a fantastic time to be involved in British disability swimming as we are going from strength to strength.

"It was a great European and World Championships for us and I am glad that everyone in the team pushed themselves and each other so hard to achieve as many medals as we did.

"But that performance is just a stepping stone as we have to keep building and improving for 2012.

"If we can be the top swimming nation in 2012, it will be absolutely amazing but we are up against some very strong nations like China and America.

"Geographically, we should not be up there with the bigger nations as we are so much smaller but the fact is that we are and we want to continue to be.

"If every British swimmer turns up in 2012 and gives it their best, I will be very happy as with the talent we have in this team and with a home crowd behind us, anything is possible for us at the London Paralympics."

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