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Dame Kelly wins Heroes of Running Mentor Award
28th April 2009
Dame Kelly Holmes’ fantastic work in setting up and running her ‘On Camp with Kelly’ mentoring initiative has been recognised by Runner’s World as she last week won the 2009 Mentor award in the magazine’s annual Heroes of Running Awards, sponsored by Aviva.
The Heroes of Running Awards recognise outstanding individuals who have achieved something astonishing or given back to the sport of athletics in a monumental way and are nominated by readers of Runner’s World.
Kelly won the award for the excellent work that she has done with ‘On Camp with Kelly’, which currently supports 60 talented young middle distance athletes. Recent research has shown that OCWK has had a significant effect in retaining talented young athletes in the sport which was one of Kelly’s main aims when she began the initiative in early 2004.
Kelly said: “The underlying motivation for me to do all this is to keep young people in the sport. It’s not about me wanting to take them all to Olympic gold level because everyone has their own level and competition is tough. Success for me would be for every athlete involved in ‘On Camp with Kelly’ to stay in the sport, finish their careers and say ‘I did everything I possibly could, I got the most out of myself and I don’t have any regrets’.”
Kelly is always quick to acknowledge that although she is the driving force behind the ‘On Camp with Kelly’ it would not be the success it is without the support of sponsors Aviva and her dedicated team of staff. A number of the staff were present to see Kelly receive her award at the ceremony at the Imperial War Museum in London and are pictured above with Kelly, Tanya Veingard and Penny Brogan from Aviva and ceremony host Katharine Merry.
There was more ‘On Camp with Kelly’ success at the Heroes of Running Awards when Charlotte Purdue won the Rising Star award for her performances in 2007 which included setting a 5000m personal best of 16:04.46, winning the English Schools Senior 3000m title and finishing second and 16th respectively in the junior races at the European and World Cross Country Championships.
Click here to read more on the awards on the Runner’s World website
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