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 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

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

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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

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