Kelly is much slighter in real life than you might imagine when seeing her racing to victory in the home straight on the track, with her muscled physique, emphasised by her very low body fat percentage. She stands at just over 5 feet tall. But despite her size, the double Olympic champion has a large presence and confidence that creates the illusion that she fills more space. This reflects her previous career in the army where she was a physical training instructor and was no doubt taught how to project herself in order to gain the attention of a group of ‘squadies’.

The voice of fitness

I begin by talking to Kelly about her being seen as the ‘voice of fitness’ in the UK and whether this is something that she aspired to achieve? She explains, “Well, I don’t know if I am the promoter for fitness in the UK, but events have sort of been taking me along those sort of lines.” Kelly acted as ‘national school’s sport champion’ on behalf of government. “When I started the role it was all about getting more young people to do more physical education and sport,” she explained adding, “We managed to get 100 million pounds out of the government to put into school sport and doubled the amount of physical activity in schools that young people do from 2 to 5 hours a week.” She believes that the country’s national obesity problems have in part stemmed from a generation who have let sport and physical activity pass them by, a fact she attributed to people, “hating the school sport experience”, because of the way PE was taught and the low priority it was given.

I ask what she would do, money no object, to improve the health of the nation? The double Olympic champion explained that she would bring together the health and sports sectors. Tellingly (and worryingly) she believes that the health department still has yet to make the correlation between health and sports and fitness participation as a means to reduce illness and disease. “They’re divided (the sport and health sectors) ……until they pair up we are still going to have major problems.” I suggest that the government has been a bit lazy at best in its attitude to fitness with around 80% of the population not taking part regularly in health improving fitness and sports activities and say, “Isn’t it a little bit too late to sort this out?” Kelly laughed, “Well it’s never too late, you just have to do it.” She went onto talk about the Olympics in 2012 and how the pressure was mounting. “We’ve now got this time-line that everyone is focussing on. Well we should be getting people active now, not next year or by 2012.” There’s an obvious passion and desire on her part to make this immediate change that will be of benefit to us all.

Kelly also believes that doctors and GP’s can obviously do a great deal to improve the nation’s health, “They need to promote the correlation between being active and being healthy and see prevention (though fitness activity) as the best medicine – rather than reacting via treatment when in many ways it’s too late.” She sees a mind change as being needed and commented, “….. it’s not rocket science really is it?” However, she did go onto qualify her statement by saying that there were so many other things for the health authorities to think about that ‘fitness and health activity as prevention’ can get lost among the myriad of other competing concerns and agendas.

“…I’d always push myself to the limit sometimes to my detriment.”

I ask what the hardest fitness challenge that Kelly has ever done is and am initially surprised by her reply, “Passing my selection for the army physical training instructor’s course. Doing log runs and rope climbs all in your boots, the dips and the gymnastics and everything. You know physically, that’s probably the hardest thing that I have ever had to do.” However, she did make a distinction with her athletic training, “Athletically everything was tough, doing hill work, doing speed endurance work on the track. I’d always push myself to the limit sometimes to my detriment.” Kelly’s career had been bedevilled by numerous injuries, notably to her Achilles tendons. She talked at length about the hundreds of hours of rehabilitation and cross training sessions that she had to do to maintain her fitness, such as aqua jogging in the pool, and cycling and circuit training.

Because of this I thought that no one would complain if Kelly ‘never sweated in anger again’ – surely she’s done with pushing her mind and body onto new challenges. Again, I’m surprised by her answer, but in her response I begin to see the tenacity with which she applied herself throughout her athletic career, “No, I always like to set myself challenges. I did Superstars on TV, rock climbing, kayaking, judo ……. There’s still a little bit left in the old body.” Then a rush of pride rushes over me (on behalf of ultra-FIT), “Wasn’t it your magazine that used to do the X-Training Challenge? That sort of thing was brilliant, because now that I am retired I would have gone for that. That would have given me a challenge.” I laugh and say, “Well, we’ll start it again just for you.”

Kelly is mentally very tough. Where does this come from?  Her answer,  “I believed that I could get there and I believed that I could do something with my life.” She reflected on her army career and believes that it played a significant role. In terms of her track success she sad, “I think that 80% of performance is what happens up here (Kelly pointed to her head). The one that is going to win is the one that has it up there and believes that they can win.” We turn to the subject of Kelly’s On camp project (see panel) and ask whether the current generation of young track athletes are not as mentally tough as the previous ones who had to work, study and train with little support. Kelly gave a wry smile and said, “To be honest no…. I do think that over the years in sport the key people that have really achieved, like Steve Backley, Colin Jackson and Steve Redgrave did not have the same support system. They did it because they wanted to do it and kept going even though there was going to be no one there to pick you up if things went wrong.” She continued by commenting that nowadays with all the assistance that athletes can get, that they can be wrapped in cotton wool and that this could reduce their ‘fight’”.

Reflecting on the On Camp squad she said, “They do get a lot of support and I think that they know that. But I always talk to them about being respectful, disciplined and working hard.” She also added that they have to be ‘nice people’. I throw in an awakward question, by asking her whether she would accept a 1.54min 800m female athlete, who was ‘not so nice’ (a world beater in other words)? Her answer no doubt reflects her integrity, “No I probably wouldn’t because at the end of the day you always come back down. If you burn your bridges on the way up they won’t be there to catch you on the way down. For me it’s not about making 10 Olympic Champions.”

John Shepherd

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