Kelly Holmes achieved her Olympic dream in Athens in 2004 when she won both 800m and 1500m titles. She had had a long and successful career up to this point, despite being dogged by injury but it was Olympic glory that she had dreamed of.
Having now retired and made a Dame for her service to sport she works with the next generation of athletes as they try and achieve similar glory.
I caught with Kelly to talk about her On Camp With Kelly scheme and a new arm of that programme that involves teaching athletes how to cook and about nutrition.
- You are involved with the ‘On Camp with Kelly’ initiative so what’s it all about?
It’s my own initiative which I started six years ago it’s a mentoring and education programme which is supported by Aviva, which is obviously invaluable as I wouldn’t be able to do it, it’s for junior international athletes and it basically teaches them every single aspect of the educational side of high performance of being a world class athlete.
Part of the journey that we have gone through gives me the opportunity to mentor this group of young people; I started with some that were sixteen who are still with me know so I have gone through their whole life journey with them (laughs)
And what I did recognise was a lot of them are going into university and going from halls to shared accommodation and one of the issues and detrimental effects to performance is that they are not getting enough energy, food, nutritional needs and it’s then detrimental to their performances leading to injury and illnesses, and at a young age you shouldn’t be having all of these issues.
And so I decided that one of the next events that I wanted to host was a cookery school so I invited Ainsley Harriott along because I thought that these kids are going through a lot of pressures in their lives on the educational side and uni and having a mindset of an elite international athlete and transitioning into the seniors there has to be a bit of light heartedness but they still have to learn.
Ainsley was really good because I chose some foods that I had used as part of my diet Spaghetti Bolognese, Fish Pie, Muesli bars and breakfast muesli and he made it very practical and easy for them to learn from him and the basic skills of cooking.
The main thing is that these kids are on a budget but they still have to eat properly but how do they do that with limited time as well? They train early in the morning they do their education during the day and then train again at night and it’s very hard.
So we made thing that could be made in quantity so they could freeze it, so you can get your two weeks worth of meals by spending one day on cooking. It went really well and I’m so glad that we did it because the athletes themselves learnt a huge amount.
- If you are not eating correctly how detrimental can that be to performances?
Well if you take it purely on females, I look after both males and females, but females the energy that you spend during excessive exercise if the energy is greater than the effects are menstrual dysfunction, so a lot of women lose their periods, don’t have them or have really erratic periods when they train excessively, osteoporosis is known and then there are stress fractures and bone density issues.
There are also disorders with eating you may have gone and trained so so hard and then you haven’t replaced that energy but still expecting your body to perform the next day so muscle repair doesn’t happen, they they break down they get these stress fractures and illnesses and part of that is because of lack of energy in their diets and lack of nutrition and replacing that energy.
As a middle distance runner stamina and speed is need so an optimal body composition is a lean muscle mass and low fat diet but you need to consume enough energy to be able to do all the training that you need. So it’s about getting a balance of what you need as a person and also what you need as an elite athlete and the body composition that that then entails.
So it’s quite scientific in a way but it’s not in terms of you just need enough food to train hard and the right foods to be able to recover; so carbohydrate food such as past and potatoes should be consumed by an athlete before training but you also need carbohydrates to replace the stores but you also need a higher quantity of protein to repair muscle damage. So it’s something that these kids need to learn and if you can break it down into simple terms saying this is how you cook what you need it becomes a lot easier and manageable.
- So what do you hope that his campaign will ultimately achieve?
I think awareness of young people and sport I have targeted, and am able to target because of the support of Aviva, able to do this programme over a long period of time which gives me an insight into the lives of young people who are very sporty and very high achievers.
So I have been able to do things where I can think right this is an issue that I’m seeing, a lot of people are being broken down, a lot of people are getting stress fractures how do I combat that? Ok food is the problem do this and they learn. But I want it to be is this could be replicated for all university students that play sport it’s not just key to middle distance runners this is key to the fact that sport has been put on a higher agenda now in this country and the Olympics is now a focal point for may young people in sport.
We are encouraging the increase of exercise and healthier lifestyles but actually what people don’t say is that people can go the opposite way where they are doing excessive exercise and forget that their body needs fuel to live as well as fuel for the work it’s going to do.
So more awareness really of the fact that university students have limited resources and they need to have more knowledge of cooking and if that starts at home then fantastic or I the education system, I know home economics was big when I was at school, and for university student involved in sport it should be more intervention needed, not just nutritional talks because young people will take in what they want to hear and ignore all the other stuff.
So we need to make it basic as in it’s great for everyone to learn how to cook they then switch into the mode of ok what do I need to cook to perform? It’s a whole circle really of intervention and education that we are trying to give them.
- You are obviously best known as a middle distance runner and I can’t really talk to you without mentioning you Olympic success so how was your Olympic experience when you look back on it now five years later?
Gosh! Everything that I do these days is surrounded around my achievements and it’s kind of weird five years later I still meet people in the street who will come up to me and say ‘Oh my gosh I watched you at the Olympics’ and where they were and what they did and it’s really nice to know that people saw my journey, and it wasn’t an easy one.
That’s why I set up ‘On Camp With Kelly’ in the first place to try and give the education and insight to what it takes and what it’s going to be like to make it easier for these young people.
But it’s very strange to feel that what I did has maybe inspired a lot of people, not just in sport but in life, to fight adversity and never give up on something it’s quite nice to feel that was part of some people’s perception of what I did.
I still play the DVDs everywhere I go because everybody asks me and the medals had to come out again last night so for me it’s still a massive part of my life, twenty years it took so it’s got to be there (laughs).
- Well that leads me to my next question really you had a long career before Athens that involved a lot of injuries and a lot of comebacks so did you think Olympic success was never going to happen for you? And what made you fight on and continue?
I have had a lot of success before my two gold medals in Athens I had ten other medals from all other major championships, European, World and Olympic but I had seven years of injury as well; the way that I run on my toes I put a lot of pressure on the calves and Achilles, a weak back, glandular fever and you just end up running the body down.
But I always knew, and I think it’s because I had had success on that journey, in my mind and in my aspirations I knew I could do I just needed to keep my body in shape, it was my body that was letting me down, it certainly was the will power or the determination to be this Olympic champion, from fourteen and having this dream it’s very different trying to achieve it.
Going through those ups and downs helped with the life journey, it was bloody tough I have to say, but I had a main goal and it meant so much to me to try and get it the whole thing about advice of somebody saying don’t give up because you will live with regrets if you have got this talent just keep going until you can do no more otherwise you will live with regrets that you didn’t give it a go.
And that for me was like if I’m good enough to be getting bronzes, silvers or golds at the Commonwealth Games, even coming back from really bad injuries, I know I can do it if I had consistency.
2004 was the only time in seven years that I hadn’t had an injury because I looked after my body like a machine and everyone around me believed in my dream and my coaches, physios, doctors all bought into my dream and not let any of my past year effect my belief in that I could do it.
I had to have a really good team around me that knew my body inside out as well as I did that could see any signs that I was leading to get an injury or a stress reaction or whatever and finally it paid off.
That perseverance is something that I use in every part of my life when I was an athlete I had one goal but now I have myself to fit into ten or twenty different people you get barriers and success and it’s the same rollercoaster ride. The perseverance that I got from being an athlete is to persevere and learn and hopefully better myself on the journey that I’m on now.
- You are now working with junior athletes now so what exactly is your role with them?
These athletes, the On Camp With Kelly athletes, are all 16-23 years old but I am hoping to expand that through a programme with Aviva to bring on younger kids and using my On Camp With Kelly athletes as mentors to the younger kids, because I have always believed they are the best advocates, so I’m getting them all mentoring and leadership qualifications so that they can give back to the younger athletes.
I also run my own charity, the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust that is using retired sports people to deliver programmes with youngsters with disadvantaged backgrounds using sport as a hook. So if you think of people like myself multiplied and the journey that we have got hopefully we can be a good role model and an inspiration to young people if we can show them it doesn’t matter what background you come from you can achieve something high in life.
Sport has the ability to connect people because there is a common ground of communication, leadership, discipline and structure and if we can give that to young people then that helps. My charity works with disadvantaged young people as well as young talented sports people using retired sports people to help deliver those programmes.
- Of course the Olympics are coming to London so how exiting is that for you as an athlete and now a mentor?
Really exciting, I went to three Olympic Games myself and got three medals from those games, I know the power of the Olympics and the Olympic spirit and the ability to unite people in a country or bringing the world over to your own.
It’s something that will change so many people’s lives young people in schools are starting to talk about the Olympics, not just from a sport perspective but the history and the whole what is the Olympic movement? We will as a nation hold the best Olympic Games ever; I have no doubt about that.
We are very passionate about sport and we hold some fantastic events, I won a gold medal in Manchester at the Commonwealth Games in my home country what more can you ask for? The people who are going to represent us wow what an opportunity in their life but also the fans, family members, coaches, volunteers everyone who is involved in the creation of the games and everyone will feel part of that journey.
In this country apart from the sport we have brilliant cultural diversity and we are also very good in the arts and music so if we bring our expertise together, our music industry and our dancers are fantastic, we bring all that together it will be a games that we will never forget. People have this one in a life time in their country and we are going to have it so fantastic.
- Having seen performances in Beijing and this year’s world championships in Berlin what are your expectations for team GB in 2012?
Well we have to replicate what we did in Beijing, our nation moved up to fourth which was totally unexpected and probably a bit of a shock to people because now the pressure is on, but the investment in sport is so huge now that we have to at to at least get to that standard if not move up further. We cannot afford to go back down and not have performances better than Beijing because the investment has doubled if not tripled over the last few years.
With Berlin athletics has but itself back on the map with performances from Jessica Ennis and Philips Idowu getting gold we need those results because when other sports are progressing, athletics being last in the programme, that’s a big deal for the sport.
We want to finish on a high and in Beijing I think we finished on a low, that’s no disrespect to those athletes that did perform, you had all of these wonderful medals in all of the other sports, which gave a great platform to sports who haven’t normally got that, but athletics didn’t perform well.
So Beijing was a good start but next year with the Commonwealth Games and the Europeans we will see more development, more athletes coming through, more finalist and more medallists and the hopefully in 2012 right across the spectrum of sport we will do great.
- And you are working with the next generation so is the future looking bright for British athletics?
Oh yes we have never had as much depth in middle distance running as we do now our athletes to try and be the best in Britain means that they are one of the best in the world it’s go to that stage now. It doesn’t matter if you are senior, under 23, under 20 or under 17, we can fill the top three places at the 800m and 1500m in this country and representatives of those go on to greater things worldwide.
Out of my On Camp With Kelly athletes seventeen of them represented Great Britain in all of the junior championships which was European under 23’s, European junior and World Youth Games and we had one that went to the World Championships in Berlin and just missed out on the final, James Brewer, and we had nine medallists.
So if you think of that as a starting point for what talent we have got coming through I absolutely belief that some of my athletes will start being the ones in the senior team that we will be watching.
- Finally what’s next for you?
Well I continue to grow my charity, it’s really important to me to get people to see what my charity entails, On Camp With Kelly I’m really passionate about that because it’s my own programme. But for me I have to start and diverse slightly for me to be able to run the programmes that I am passionate about I have to start and make money myself.
So I have to start to develop my own career pathway and I’m really interested in women’s leadership and female engagement and development so I’m looking at developing a business that will have that at its core.
If I can be successful in business then hopefully I will have the ability to support my own charities and causes that I’m passionate about even more so they can grow.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Kelly Holmes achieved her Olympic dream in Athens in 2004 when she won both 800m and 1500m titles. She had had a long and successful career up to this point, despite being dogged by injury but it was Olympic glory that she had dreamed of.
Having now retired and made a Dame for her service to sport she works with the next generation of athletes as they try and achieve similar glory.
I caught with Kelly to talk about her On Camp With Kelly scheme and a new arm of that programme that involves teaching athletes how to cook and about nutrition.
- You are involved with the ‘On Camp with Kelly’ initiative so what’s it all about?
It’s my own initiative which I started six years ago it’s a mentoring and education programme which is supported by Aviva, which is obviously invaluable as I wouldn’t be able to do it, it’s for junior international athletes and it basically teaches them every single aspect of the educational side of high performance of being a world class athlete.
Part of the journey that we have gone through gives me the opportunity to mentor this group of young people; I started with some that were sixteen who are still with me know so I have gone through their whole life journey with them (laughs)
And what I did recognise was a lot of them are going into university and going from halls to shared accommodation and one of the issues and detrimental effects to performance is that they are not getting enough energy, food, nutritional needs and it’s then detrimental to their performances leading to injury and illnesses, and at a young age you shouldn’t be having all of these issues.
And so I decided that one of the next events that I wanted to host was a cookery school so I invited Ainsley Harriott along because I thought that these kids are going through a lot of pressures in their lives on the educational side and uni and having a mindset of an elite international athlete and transitioning into the seniors there has to be a bit of light heartedness but they still have to learn.
Ainsley was really good because I chose some foods that I had used as part of my diet Spaghetti Bolognese, Fish Pie, Muesli bars and breakfast muesli and he made it very practical and easy for them to learn from him and the basic skills of cooking.
The main thing is that these kids are on a budget but they still have to eat properly but how do they do that with limited time as well? They train early in the morning they do their education during the day and then train again at night and it’s very hard.
So we made thing that could be made in quantity so they could freeze it, so you can get your two weeks worth of meals by spending one day on cooking. It went really well and I’m so glad that we did it because the athletes themselves learnt a huge amount.
- If you are not eating correctly how detrimental can that be to performances?
Well if you take it purely on females, I look after both males and females, but females the energy that you spend during excessive exercise if the energy is greater than the effects are menstrual dysfunction, so a lot of women lose their periods, don’t have them or have really erratic periods when they train excessively, osteoporosis is known and then there are stress fractures and bone density issues.
There are also disorders with eating you may have gone and trained so so hard and then you haven’t replaced that energy but still expecting your body to perform the next day so muscle repair doesn’t happen, they they break down they get these stress fractures and illnesses and part of that is because of lack of energy in their diets and lack of nutrition and replacing that energy.
As a middle distance runner stamina and speed is need so an optimal body composition is a lean muscle mass and low fat diet but you need to consume enough energy to be able to do all the training that you need. So it’s about getting a balance of what you need as a person and also what you need as an elite athlete and the body composition that that then entails.
So it’s quite scientific in a way but it’s not in terms of you just need enough food to train hard and the right foods to be able to recover; so carbohydrate food such as past and potatoes should be consumed by an athlete before training but you also need carbohydrates to replace the stores but you also need a higher quantity of protein to repair muscle damage. So it’s something that these kids need to learn and if you can break it down into simple terms saying this is how you cook what you need it becomes a lot easier and manageable.
by Helen Earnshaw
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