Stately Holmes
Interview | Gareth A Davies How do you inspire young girls on the sports field and beyond? Put glamorous Olympic champion Kelly Holmes at the helm, of course DAME KELLY HOLMES was inspired as a 10-year-old by Sebastian Coe’s Olympic feats in the early 1980s. Look around in British sport, though, and little has changed in 20 years – there’s still a resounding dearth of [...]
Interview | Gareth A Davies
How do you inspire young girls on the sports field and beyond? Put
glamorous Olympic champion Kelly Holmes at the helm, of course
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alt="Dame Kelly Holmes’s new role is to enthuse schoolgirls about sports">
DAME KELLY HOLMES was
inspired as a 10-year-old by
Sebastian Coe’s Olympic feats
in the early 1980s. Look around
in British sport, though, and
little has changed in 20 years
– there’s still a resounding dearth
of female sporting icons. You
can count them on the fingers
of one hand: Zara Phillips, regal
equestrian; Paula Radcliffe, world champion long-distance
runner; sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur; and the two dames of
the athletics track, Tanni Grey-Thompson and Kelly Holmes.
The latter pair are universally recognisable. Grey-Thompson
was a wheelchair athlete and multi-gold medal winner at the
Paralympic Games; Holmes lifted the nation’s spirits, and
captured the hearts and minds of the British public with her
two gilded medals at the classic 800m and 1,500m distances
at the Athens Olympics in 2004. It was the moment of
that summer and as a result, Holmes became a British icon.
Having retired a few months after her golden moments in
Greece, she has been breathing energy into new projects.
Fame has come as the biggest surprise to Holmes, from
Kent. She is recognised on every street corner, and Britain’s first
140mph shuttle train, the “Olympic Javelin”, which will link
the Channel Tunnel with the Olympic Park, bears her name.
Yet her greatest passion and drive is not to be a celebrity, but
a pioneer in a sporting revolution which she believes could
change the lives of many women for generations.
“My life has really changed in the last three-and-a-half
years [since winning double gold at the Athens Olympics],”
explains Holmes, who has invited voyager to an outdoor
activity centre in Lincolnshire with 100 girls aged between
14 and 16. This is the heartbeat of Holmes’ life at present
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Following her around has been exhausting. We have been
on exercise bikes with one group of girls and we jogged across
open fields to another set of teenagers. Holmes takes
part in a combat class, boxes on the pads and then
completes a dance routine with another group of girls.
Without a moment’s hesitation we are on the move
again. This time it is upwards, a climb high into the trees
to walk on steel tightropes on an assault course 12 metres
off the ground. During the entire process the 37-year-old
retired professional athlete is cajoling, coaxing, encouraging
and congratulating girls who are participating because
they are “disengaged” from doing sport at school. Holmes,
physically smaller than most of them, commands their
respect. She hardly pauses for breath and there is an intensity
about her. Then again, her focus is legendary.
Holmes is concerned, nay very worried, about the health
of our nation’s girls. We should all know why, considering
there are constant reminders about obesity being on the
rise. And as Britain’s Chief Medical Officers have warned,
the current crop of children in primary school are the first
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alt="Holmes at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, where she
won two gold medals">
generation who could pre-decease their parents. The most atrisk
group is teenage girls, whose drop-out rate from activity
and physical education is highest. Research from the Norwich
Union Girls Active programme, which Holmes oversees,
released late in 2007, indicates that only 4% of girls aged 16
are taking part in four hours of physical activity outside school.
Two years ago, the retired runner was asked by the
Government if she would become the first “National
School Sport Champion” and it is no understatement
to say that this is now all-consuming in her life, along
with her work in developing young, elite athletes
and spearheading charity initiatives up and down the
country. However, she is not simply a figurehead for
the cause; she has thrown her all in with it.
“I never really thought I’d be leading a revolution in
women’s sport,” Holmes muses during the lunch break,
nibbling cheese sandwiches, but surprisingly, avoiding
the chocolate – she is a self-confessed chocoholic.
“When I won at the Olympics, I knew I had achieved
my life’s ambition as an athlete, but what I am doing
now has become even more important,” she says.
“I have become very involved in it. I haven’t just been going
around different schools and projects smiling sweetly.
I have been challenging Government, challenging
Ministers, looking for a change. It really does matter to me.”
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alt="Coaching a group of teenagers as part of the Girls Active programme">
Despite possessing a certain serenity as well as sparkle,
at the same time there is an air of no-nonsense about
Holmes. That’s the army sergeant in her – Sgt Holmes, you
can imagine, would not have stood for any messing in the
physical training environment. The military was her calling
before she became a full-time athlete in 1997. At 18, she
joined the British Army where she completed nine years’
service, initially as a HGV driver before becoming a physical
training instructor in 1991, reaching the rank of sergeant.
Holmes – the eldest of five children, whose mother was
17 when she was born and whose father was absent for much
of her upbringing – started running aged 12, encouraged
by her PE teacher. From her early teens to the present day,
her interests have almost exclusively been sport-oriented
– although, she does lay claim now to also enjoying interior
design and admits to having become “a culture vulture”. One
of the greatest changes in her life, though, is leaving tracksuits
and training shoes behind. “It’s all I used to wear,” she admits.
But these days, she enjoys wearing high fashion pieces and
– since her retirement – heels, encouraged, no doubt, by the
numerous invitations she now receives to red-carpet events.
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alt="Racing to victory in the 800m at the 2004 Olympic Games">
Despite the development of these more mellow interests,
Holmes barely spends a day standing still. “I am very focused
on what I want to achieve,” she admits. “How do we change
the mindset of a generation? We can start by empowering
them by putting them into challenging situations. It’s about
the legacy I can leave for girls, just like the Olympics in 2012
[for which Holmes was one of the London bid’s figureheads].
“Having an Olympic Games in London in 2012 is not just
about medals, it is about creating a legacy,” she states.
“Yes, medals are really important – you want your country
to do well – but when those Games are over, we need it to
have created a lasting effect for the future.”
So, outside of sport, what else is going on in the life of
Dame Kelly Holmes? “To be perfectly honest, this is my
life right now. I get picked up by a car most days – even
a helicopter sometimes – and I’m working on projects,
speaking at conferences, at receptions, working with schools.
It’s non-stop.” It’s tough persuading Holmes to talk about her
private life, as she prefers to speak in broader terms.
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alt="Holmes is showing a more glamorous side to her
personality in her new role promoting athletics">
“I always wanted to make a difference in my life. It was
always about people for me,” she does reveal. “I believe
everyone has something they are good at, whether you are
high-profile, or whether you work in your local supermarket,
in customer services, or you are helping your community.
Sport, for me, has a special type of expression within it. I
believe there is no barrier in sport – it doesn’t matter what
colour, creed, religion or gender you belong to when you take
part in sport. When I get people to that place, it is there that I
can try to change people’s mindsets.” And it is this philosophy
that she puts into motion when mentoring school girls.
So what was she like as a teenage schoolgirl? “I wasn’t
rebellious, as in naughty or bad. I was just individual in my
way,” Holmes says. “I was encouraged into sport at a young
age, so I had a strong discipline in my life. I was a person
who could lead people, or speak up for myself, or stand up
for what I believed in, but I wasn’t ever out doing wrong. But
I understand teenagers – I have an 18-year-old sister. I like
cheeky kids. Some kids I’ve worked with on these projects are
really hard work. They sneak for a fag, eff and blind all day,
and go off sulking. I just go after them, go to their level and
bring them around. I won’t accept one-word grunts. I can
relate to the girls. I had a broken family, yet I wanted to be
someone special, to prove to my friends and family that
I was someone they could be proud of.”
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alt="The athlete waves goodbye to professional competition after finishing her last
race at a Grand Prix in Sheffield in August 2005">
Further evidence of this straightforward attitude is her
opinion on the case of Marion Jones, the American athlete
who won three Olympic gold medals and who admitted last
November that she had taken steroids. Was it a shock for
Holmes? “No, but it was definitely a disappointment, because
here was a woman who has so many people looking up to her
and she has actually let everyone down. It’s a disappointment
to me that someone at the very pinnacle in sport has said
they have been an honest and true champion and yet they are
cheating their rivals out of a place in history. There is no doubt
in my mind that she should be stripped of her gold medals.”
As for her own two Olympic gold medals, Holmes
reiterates that winning them was truly a life-changing
event. “It was more than a dream come true after years
of disappointments and injuries. I’d won 10 medals
leading up to 2004 so I knew I had the ability to achieve
the ultimate. I had learned a lot about myself, my body.
Everything in my life had to be at 100%. In 2004, I made
a commitment to eat and sleep properly. My nutrition
and hydration were perfect. The physiotherapist was
there all the time… The rest is history.”
Kelly Holmes’ official website is
www.doublegold.co.uk
