Birth Date: April 3, 2000
Age: 21
Sport: Swimming
Event: 50m Freestyle
A scholar and Olympian, Elinah Phillip is the BVI’s leading national swimmer, holding records in the 50, 100, and 200m freestyle and the 50m butterfly.
For a nation which doesn’t have a training pool, Elinah who started learning to swim in the sea on Beef Island, went on to deliver extraordinary results after she moved to the United Kingdom as a tween and then to the USA as a university student.Elinah has represented the BVI in major games including the Rio Olympics, the Youth Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the PanAm Games, the World Championships, Junior World Championships and the FINA World Cup. She was a regular competitor regionally at the Carifta Swimming Championships and is the all time BVI medal winner at Carifta events across all sports in the BVI.
While in the UK, Elinah was a multiple medalist and record holder in the Swim England East Region and the winner of the Wilkinson Sword Award in 2018, awarded annually for achievement in the sport of swimming. She also competed in the British National Championships, and the British Summer and Winter Championships.
Elinah joined Rutgers University in 2019 where she set several school records as a freshman and became a finalist in the B1G 10 Championships. After an eight month hiatus from swimming partially enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Elinah transferred to Florida International University in January 2021 where she resumed her swimming career. She quickly lowered her 50, 100 and 200 meter freestyle national records. Her progress and results have impressed her swimming coach as she goes from strength to strength and who describes her as having “limitless potential.”
Elinah is a rising junior at FIU and an Honour Student. While attending the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Elinah will be completing online Summer studies in Pre Dentistry at Columbia University with the course ending the same day as her competition starts on July 30.
Tokyo 2020 will be the second Olympics for Elinah following her debut at Rio 2016. She is the first swimmer and the youngest athlete to represent the BVI at an Olympic Games.
Coach: Brien Moffitt
