Having achieved a career grand slam of Paralympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles before reaching her twenties, on paper at least she was living an athlete’s dream.
Out of the water, the swimmer’s reality was vastly different though.
Alice was born with bilateral talipes, otherwise known as club foot, with both of her ankles fused and her right foot in particular highly problematic for her.
She was 13 when she first asked surgeons about the possibility of amputation, but they were reluctant to do so while the teenager was still growing.
Alice battled on, claimed gold after gold at successive major events between 2014 and 2019 before she was forced to reassess her situation again.
In 2020 the crutches she relied upon began to take a considerable toll on her body and elbow surgery forced her to miss the Tokyo Paralympics the following year.
“My mobility was awful,” she tells the Women’s Sports Alliance.
“I wasn’t allowed to self-propelling a wheelchair, I wasn’t allowed to use my crutches even post-surgery, so I was having friends push me around.
“I just started thinking, ‘I can’t walk without crutches because of my right foot so a prosthetic foot would be way more functional’ and improve my quality of life.”
Many consultations with medical professionals, discussions with her friends, family and coaching team followed before Alice – after “quite a bit of crying” underwent the knife in January 2022.
Her life changed immediately “for the better” and after five days in hospital she was released home and posted online about “feeling great” and being “incredibly optimistic” about her future.