Latest News
Rejuvenated Kelly Holmes off and running again
The Times 2nd July 2010
By Rick Broadbent Athletics Correspondent
When the dust settles on the 2012 Olympics and the next big thing becomes yesterday’s hero, Dame Kelly Holmes will be waiting over the hill. What goes up must come down and after the hype and glory will come the stark reality of a tickertape depression. “There will be that, ‘Oh my God, what next?’ moment,” the double Olympic champion said.
This is why Holmes has an office in the City and a sleek blue power dress. She turned 40 this year and is no longer satisfied with being a sporting icon.
“I had never thought one second past winning the Olympics,” she said. “I took it to extremes and gave it everything, so it was surreal when it happened. I pinched myself for the next six months, but in sport you have a goal and suddenly it’s gone and you don’t have an aim. Without a doubt there are many people hanging on by the skin of their teeth for 2012, but when it’s over, it will be such an unbelievable downer.”
Holmes says it has taken her until now to figure out what she wants to achieve. “I have given myself five years to become a successful businesswoman,” she said. “For the first time since I was an athlete, I’ve got fire in my belly again. The excitement is back.”
The idea that a woman who won the 800 and 1,500 metres at the 2004 Olympics in Athens wants to become the new Lord Sugar is shocking and intriguing. Most sportspeople are happy to bask in past glories, dabble in the media and accept that things will never be quite as good again, but not Holmes. She has been consulting high-flying business people, such as Sir Keith Mills, the founder of Air Miles, and Kelly Hoppen, the leading interior designer, to find out what she needs to do. She has signed up for an Institute of Directors modular course and speaks of a Jamie Oliver-style empire based on health. “I’ve made myself have the confidence to go out and speak to people,” she said. “I’ve been petrified, but you need help, just like an athlete needs a coach.”
Holmes has scarcely been inactive since she retired from athletics in 2005. She has tried to plug the teenage talent drain through her On Camp scheme and it is two years since she set up the DKH Legacy Trust, whose multifaceted work embraces getting jobless people fit for employment. She is also the brains behind the Government’s School Olympics idea, launched this week with an aim to get competitive sport back into the playground.
However, it is big business that is driving her now and that wider concern for reinvention has led the British Olympic Association to ask her to deliver its new Athlete Career programme, designed to rescue sportspeople from the scrapheap of sepia memories.
“I spoke to the IOC last September because there was no transitioning programme in Britain,” she said. “When you stop being an athlete, you lose your identity and that can be weird and scary. Essentially, you give your life to a sport and that comes to an end.
“It’s not that we are owed anything, but in the Army you have a resettlement period where you are helped for a year to become a normal civilian again. In team sports it’s worse because there is also the loss of camaraderie, like the Forces. I spoke to Graham Thorpe about it and he said it’s a real struggle in cricket where there’s a high suicide rate.”
There are numerous ways Holmes plans to help old pros, from CV writing to counselling and from business mentoring to boardroom training. She says she is so motivated that she would always have found something, but knows life is getting harder for athletes and that London 2012 will be a double-edged sword.
“Every Olympian gets invited to everything for a year and then they become another name and number,” she said. “If I’d got two silvers then nobody would have cared about me. And it’s a lot tougher now because there are more sportspeople, so they are going to be numbers unless they are absolutely extraordinary.”
Holmes famously admitted that her injury woes were so debilitating that she self-harmed at her nadir and it is sad to hear her expose the destructive side of sport by saying she has never missed competing.
“There is way too much pressure put on people,” she said. “Look at Paula [Radcliffe]. As an athlete, you don’t want to be put on that pedestal. You get so much of that leading up to big events that it becomes expectation.
“We all have our own expectation and ultimately we want to win, but when you add external expectation from an outside world without inside knowledge, it becomes very hard. That’s only going to be worse for those facing their last chance in 2012. A massive weight lifted from my shoulders when I crossed that line for the second time in 2004. It had been such an emotional rollercoaster. But it took me four years to think, ‘I did it’.”
That is the would-be City slicker’s harsh lesson for the class of 2012 — they must realise that the finishing line is only the start.