This episode was originally released as part of Series 1 on June 4, 2019.
Four times Ironman World Champion, Chrissie is now Global Lead of Health and Wellbeing for Parkrun.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
This episode was originally released as part of Series 1 on June 4, 2019.
Four times Ironman World Champion, Chrissie is now Global Lead of Health and Wellbeing for Parkrun.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello, I'm Sue Anstos, the host of the Game Changers, with a quick message before this episode. As we've had thousands of new listeners in 2023, we thought we'd take this small break between series 15 and 16 to share some of our back catalogue. We've loved listening back to these earlier episodes and hope that you also enjoy hearing from these incredible leaders in women's sport. And while I'm here, don't forget that the whole of my book Game On the Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to. In series 13 of the podcast, every episode is me reading a chapter of the book. Now it's time for the Game Changers. Hello and welcome to the Game Changers.
Speaker 1:I'm Sue Anstos, and in this podcast series you're here from trailblazing fearless women in sport. In this episode, it's four times Ironman world champion, chrissy Wellington MBE, who, following her amazing sporting career, now works as the global head of health and wellbeing for Park Run. Chrissy is based down in Bristol and she was kind enough to welcome me into her lovely home for a cup of tea and a frank conversation about her career and her future aspirations. Chrissy was pretty late to the elite sporting scene and didn't compete as a professional until she was 30. So I started by asking her why she thought this was.
Speaker 2:Different athletes take different paths to professional sporting success. Maybe mine wasn't as stereotypical as some, but growing up I was an active child. I wasn't sedentary. We grew up in Norfolk, we had a lot of freedom, just to run around. But I think a lot of the characteristics which in hindsight enabled me to become successful at sport manifested at a very young age, but just in a different area of my life. So as a youngster I was just always focused on academic excellence. So I was just focused on the self mastery academically. I just was competitive with myself. I was so competitive with others, but that was very much focused on my academic studies. So sport was something that I did very much for fun, just for the social side. I didn't really have aspirations to achieve any potential that I may or may not have had in sport. I did join the local swimming club so swam for them.
Speaker 1:I love the story of your mum and dad taking you down and saying you could move on to the next level of swimming, but you chose to stay kind of where you were for friendships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was a member of the very local swimming club and trained three or four times a week, which compared to those children that are really prioritising their swimming, they're training seven, eight, nine, ten times a week. But I definitely developed the technique and maybe I showed some potential and I was approached to join Norwich Penguins, which is a big swimming club in Norfolk. But I really wanted to be surrounded by my friends and I also knew that that would impact on my academic studies, travelling an hour to and from training. I was just really mindful of the impact that that might have. So I chose to pursue the academic path initially and then continued that really at university, where I definitely did sport very much for fun, if at all.
Speaker 1:And so when you then did come to sport and you had the meteoric, extraordinary success so quickly and early, which must have been a surprise to yourself, what was that? A surprise as to the huge success you had getting started.
Speaker 2:I think some would say it was a meteoric rise and would be very surprising. But that's if I think you take that stereotypical view of a path to sporting success. So I believe that athletes, wherever they come from, are shaped by previous experiences. So yes, in terms of my sporting history it was a surprise, but I'd had such a wealth of life experiences and as an athlete its success depends on so much more than physical prowess. So I think my success at sport yes, it was a surprise in some respects, but the traits I guess that I needed to become successful I'd already shown in different areas of my life. But definitely, growing up I never had any aspirations of even competing at national level and let alone international level. And I'd watch sport on TV and occasionally from the sidelines and just be in awe of professional athletes, but never once did I have the aspiration of ever becoming one.
Speaker 1:And who were those athletes that inspired you growing up?
Speaker 2:I think my role models were closer to home Growing up, our role models change. As very young children our role models are our parents and they're very, very close to us, and then, as we get older, it's our friends at school and our teachers and that was my teachers were incredibly important for me and they were the ones that first encouraged me, apart from my parents, first encouraged me to dream big and to aspire to greatness in terms of my academic studies and really, really encouraged me, and for that I still am incredibly grateful. But I saw sporting personalities on, like I said, on the TV, but I don't think they were role models to me in terms of encouraging me to aspire to more, to be that name. Yeah, in terms of my sport, I think I was influenced by others, you know, at university by my academic lecturers and by my peers.
Speaker 2:But I do remember being at Swimming Pool. There was a swimming gala at Ipswich Swimming Pool and Sharon Davies was her kind of swimming athletic height then. But she'd come back to Ipswich Swimming Pool where she first started swimming and I was just kind of dumbstruck to be in the presence of swimming greatness and as a young, so I just wanted to get as close to as possible. So I do remember just trying to get there, just get close enough to be able to touch her.
Speaker 1:She told her that.
Speaker 2:I have told her that we did an event last year and I admitted that, you know, the last time we'd actually been in the same room.
Speaker 1:I tried to sidle up and touch her.
Speaker 2:I do remember that and I do remember. You know it's amazing what an impact, you know, being in the presence of a professional sports person can have on a young person. So I'm kind of cognizant of that now that I'm, you know, I'm in that position.
Speaker 1:And I'm conscious we talked about before. There are lots of podcasts of your story and your sort of progress into triathlon, and one of the elements that really interests me in that getting that background into the sport is your time in Nepal, when you were away in Nepal. So can you talk a little bit about what you were doing there and perhaps how that created a foundation for future success?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I found running, as many people will know, in around 2000. I started running. It was a mental release from my academic studies I was doing my MA and also as a means to lose weight and enter the London Marathon in 2002. And you know, it became very focused on my new goal of trying to break three hours for the marathon and then also at that time, moved to London and was working for the government on international development policy and I became quite disillusioned with high level policy making and really wanted to work at the grass roots and so decided to take a sabbatical from that job and live and work in Nepal. And just before I left for Nepal I'd put my toe, dipped my toe, into triathlon at a very amateur level.
Speaker 1:Is that the Eaton Dohani? We'll be there.
Speaker 2:Fantastic races. Fantastic, you know, safe but very beginner friendly races. And I most certainly was a beginner. So I kind of dipped my toe in, became very intrigued by triathlon, started to do a little bit of swimming and bike training to complement the running, but then moved to Nepal and really swimming and I did a bit of running in Nepal. But you can't run consistently or particularly well when you're getting chased by rabid dogs. I was primarily biking there and off-road biking on a mountain bike, but it was, it was really in Nepal that I explored for the first time my capacity for endurance sports.
Speaker 1:I'd done the London marathon, but In a very impressive three and eight. Three and eight minutes, three hours and eight minutes. Isn't it Three hours and eight minutes which yeah, well, again was a revelation to me you know something I never could have expected.
Speaker 2:You know both in terms of that time and just how much I enjoyed it. But you know, in Nepal I think, I realised that A I had this physical predisposition to be able to endure physically, so I just had this capacity to go all day without getting fatigued.
Speaker 1:I had a bit of a feel. Was that a massive surprise to you? You'd known that in the years before you'd done the marathon?
Speaker 2:No, I hadn't because I'd never explored it. I think we've all got talent and unless we start to try new things and we have the opportunity to explore them, we never know. And so I was in a position where my you know, the friends I'd made, both the Nepalis and the expats, were going out biking all day and I thought, well, I'll go with them. And as they were getting more tired, I just didn't seem to. And you know, we had some fabulous adventures, cycling across the Himalayas, over a thousand kilometres, all at very high altitude.
Speaker 2:And, yes, so physically I found myself to be stronger than I think I ever knew I could be, but also just psychologically. You're enduring different conditions, different challenges, and I was able to, you know, overcome some of those, or many of those. And so I think I just developed this, or maybe tapped into this kind of psychological strength, and then developed also the physical strength, and the physical strength that you gain from being altitude, the acclimatisation, and that you lose that after, you know, after returning back to sea level. But I think it's the psychological strength that stays with you. So when people say, just reflecting back on your earlier question, that I came from nowhere, well, I didn't. I came from somewhere. I came from, a place that I believe enabled me to be the best athlete that I could. I could be, but it wasn't that kind of uni linear. Yes.
Speaker 1:And I guess that I love that story of you. I think it's in Argentina, where you kind of rock up to an event that's full of professionals and others and I'm on the race and then just say that it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know my life journey has been one of constant surprises. I've tried new things and realised how much I enjoy him and that I'm actually quite good at things, that I maybe didn't know that that I was, but I. So, after I left Nepal, I went, did a little bit of cycle touring around Australia, mainly in Tasmania, and then flew to Argentina and did some cycle touring around Argentina. So I had my, my old, trusty mountain bike and the panniers on and I thought I'll stop in this really beautiful town in Patagonia for a couple of days.
Speaker 2:So I still had the panniers on my bike, the rack, sorry not the actual the, the, the the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, my boyfriend Cause I didn't have one, and so I just thought I'll go off, you know, stop here for a few days and just go off on on some rides. So I went off on an off road ride and that this car pulls up beside me. Well, did you know that there's this duathlon race, run, bike run? And I said well, no, oh, you should enter.
Speaker 2:So I found myself in this hotel, surrounded by professional athletes. Everything was in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish and but somehow managed to find my way onto the start line, minus my bike racks and yeah, one one that that race and then ended up cycle touring with the cup that I'd managed to win in stuck in my panniers and, I guess, a lovely lesson there for everybody isn't there when you talk about you know you wouldn't have known in terms of sport unless you tried it as a life message of perhaps you know, perhaps I can paint, who knows what we can do if we don't actually attempt those things in life yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I think some of it comes down to self-agency and being prepared to take a chance, and some of it comes down to opportunity, and we're not all blessed with the opportunities to go to Nepal and explore the possibility of cycling. But I, yes, I think in in all of our lives we're presented with opportunities to try new things and we should seize them, because often we can be so scared for, so scared of failure. I think, especially in the UK, we were sometimes scared to. You know, put ourselves out there and be different and step into the unknown, but that can be so debilitating.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think when we work a lot with obviously getting women and girls into sport and trying things and I see, well, three teenagers myself, I see that with girls around but that a bit of a female thing of not wanting to take risks or put yourself out there to try something different, to conform do you see that in the work that you're doing in sport?
Speaker 2:yeah, there's probably definitely a gendered angle to that. There's evidence around job applications and the fact that that men, even if they're not necessarily suitably qualified, will not hesitate to apply for something, whereas a woman would probably only apply if they felt confident that they, you know, fulfilled all of the all of the criteria. It might be the same in sport. I think that the reason for the gender disparity and participation is structural and it is based on a range of different reasons, some of those psychological, but you know many of them logistical and structural and the way in which sport is governed and the way in which it's covered and and managed.
Speaker 2:But you know the data is is quite promising in terms of you know, increased participation both at the grass roots level and higher up in terms of elite sport and especially in endurance sports, in increase in participation of women, which is fantastic to see and, I guess, of all sports.
Speaker 1:Triathlon is fairly good in terms of its equality of opportunity and equal prize, money and distances and male females competing in comparison to some other sports definitely you can help.
Speaker 2:You know it can be held up as as an exemplar. It hasn't always been the case. There was a time where prize money there was a differential in prize money, but triathlon is a relatively new sport and women and men have always raced on on the same course, on on the same day and now for the same prize money and, I believe, for the same opportunities for commercial sponsorship and media coverage. It is an egalitarian sport.
Speaker 1:It's definitely not perfect there's been issues in the past around Ironman places and so on. Is that resolved now? Is that?
Speaker 2:the world championships, there are still. There's still a disparity in terms of the number of slots. The organisers would say that it's proportional to the number of women and men that take part, but which needs which exactly? So there's still only 30 slots for women and 50 for men, and that's something that people are campaigning to to change. But yes, relative to other sports, it is.
Speaker 1:It is egalitarian, much more egalitarian and if we talked then up to Ironman, I can't talk to you and not talk about your Ironman experiences. And moving on to that, I guess, to cast in your mind back to that first, I'm a world championship. So perhaps can you talk us through how it felt at that time to to line up in Kona so soon, having, you know, qualified to be there yeah, I guess to speak to that, I just have to backtrack as to how I did come to be there.
Speaker 2:I only became a professional athlete aged 30, in 2007, but only ever did so with the intention of being an Olympic distance athlete and with the probably unrealistic expectation of trying to qualify for Beijing the next year and would you have made money was a potential, I guess, to be on the Olympic program.
Speaker 1:Is that what you would aspire to then?
Speaker 2:probably too late to be on the Olympic program, but you can still try. I could still have tried to have accumulated enough points to at least get myself in a position where I was able to, you know, be considered for selection at least. But you know, my coach at that time probably saw something in me that I hadn't seen, and he saw an athlete that was much more predisposed to being successful at the longer distances.
Speaker 2:Not that, you know, olympic distance triathlon isn't long, it's a two-hour event it's a very long way but he, he saw an Ironman athlete in me but very much trained me as an Olympic distance athlete, which is quite, you know, fascinating. Actually, when you look at my, at my program, it wasn't a kind of stereotypical long-course triathletes program. And he said to me did I want to do an Ironman? Actually, that wasn't exactly how it went. If those that know my coach know that it was more of an order. You will be doing an Ironman in five weeks and Regardless of the fact that you haven't got a traditional time trial bike, okay, all right, and that I'm man's in in Korea, okay, where it's 90 degrees, 90% humidity, okay.
Speaker 2:So I found myself on that start line and I race like I didn't have a care in the world because I didn't. It was so New to me and again, it was a revelation it was. I realized just how much I enjoyed that distance and that I had a capacity for it that I didn't know I had, and In winning that race I were, I qualified for the world championships. The catch was that six weeks later in Hawaii, and so I didn't really have time to to think too much about it, I certainly didn't do a lot of research into what it meant to race the world championships. All of my peers knew about the, the history there were real historians of the sport and they'd watched videos and and even you know race there and I Just didn't have a clue. I didn't have a mental image of what it meant to be in, you know, racing of the world championships in Hawaii. So I went there blind and the only measure I had was of my potential was relative to my Training partners.
Speaker 2:So I knew that some of my training partners had achieved top 10 places at previous world championships. So I thought, right, yeah, I'm on a par with them, I Can aim for a top 10. So that was my goal. And you know, in hindsight I don't think you ever get perfect preparation for a race and I don't think any race ever goes perfectly. But in hindsight that the preparation was really relatively suboptimal. You know, I booked my accommodation very late. I was staying halfway up a volcano with two people I didn't meet it hadn't met before in a Single bed that was in a studio apartment. I didn't rent a car. My pedals or my bike broke and I got this car garage to glue them together.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was comedic looking back, but I think it could be a real blessing Because the more experienced you are, the more you know. So that can be an advantage because knowledge is power. But I also think, yeah, it comes with added pressure and added expectations. So I Just really didn't know what it took, or what people might think it would take, to prepare for this race. So I just went in and rolled with the punches and Wasn't really Constrained by by expectation, both my own and and definitely no one else had any expectations for me. So that race was I. I Really haven't got the words. Actually, it was momentous and joyous and liberating and Life-affirming it was. Yeah, it was a moment that changed my, my life forever and my understanding of myself and my capabilities and, you know, catapulted me into Into the public eye and you mentioned your coach there, brett Sunn.
Speaker 1:So I guess, looking back when he was quite brutal in his approach of training athletes and that obviously that completely worked brutal might not be the right word, but I think he's had a part of training Greyhounds and horses and you know that whole getting the very best he could do from athletes but that doesn't necessarily work for for all athletes and I think there is. I guess there's been some concerns within the Olympic sport in the UK in terms of Potentially bullying of athletes etc. Do you think, looking back now, I mean, clearly it was right for you, but would you have had concerns about his treatment of athletes? Do you think if it was your, if you now had a younger people going to be trained by coach in that way?
Speaker 2:Brett's a very controversial coach who adopts controversial Some would say very controversial methods.
Speaker 2:Some would say that the way in which he treated me, and definitely the way in which he treated others, was time to mount to bullying. I would probably agree and Do I think that that makes for a healthy, sustainable coach athlete relationship. No, I don't, and whilst His techniques may have worked for me at that time, they, differently, didn't work for other athletes, and that's definitely not to say that I can now, on reflection, condone them, and it's probably one of the reasons why I needed to leave, because it wasn't the relationship that I Wanted with a coach long term. I think. As athletes evolve through their careers, and coaches too, then so the relationship changes, and Sometimes the athlete needs something different, sometimes the coach doesn't, you know, need something different to that athlete, and I Knew after a couple of years that I wanted a relationship with a coach that was a lot more Egalitarian, a lot more reciprocal, a lot more of a partnership, and one where it wasn't based on intimidation and it wasn't based on fear and manipulation.
Speaker 1:And do you think you'd have had that success if you had self-coached or with a different coach?
Speaker 2:We'll never know. I definitely don't think I would have had it as quickly. There would be no other coach Not even my second coach, as fantastic as he was, dave Scott that would have entered me into an Ironman as early as Brett did. Brett just has this confidence and this self-belief in his philosophies and in his approach and he truly believed, I think, that I could be world champion.
Speaker 2:And rightly so, and so I don't think necessarily that I would have achieved that success immediately under another coach. Would I have achieved it, I think, under someone like Dave? Yes, but maybe just not as quickly. Maybe they would have been a little bit more conservative.
Speaker 1:And I've heard people talk in terms of, I guess, what the Ironman brings to you, that mental side of having to constantly overcome the temptation to stop and to give up at any point during an Ironman. You talk a little bit for those that I guess would never have, will never experience an Ironman.
Speaker 2:just a bit about the, I guess, the mental experience of completing I endure the same emotions in doing a 5k as I do an Ironman, Because during a 5k you're racing it a lot faster and a lot harder and there'll be a point in that 5k where you think this really, really hurts and I'd like to stop now.
Speaker 2:And it's the same in an Ironman Sport, if we're pushing ourselves and we want to go as fast as possible, is about learning to endure discomfort and self-doubt and pain at certain points.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I experience that in all of the different races and challenges that I've done, but definitely over the course of an Ironman it lasts a lot longer. For me it was a I was fortunate to get it over and done with as soon as possible. It's a nine hour race and within that nine hour race you're going to have incredible highs and incredible lows as well, and your success in that event is about your ability to endure both not to get too carried away with successes and to be able to overcome the lows. And it's not just your physical prowess that's going to mean that you can succeed. It's utilizing all of the different strategies that you've got in your toolbox mentally to be able to override that discomfort or that self-doubt. And I have a variety of strategies that I've honed over the years, from having a having a mantra and positive affirmations to compartmentalizing the race into different segments to while you're competing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, while I'm competing you know counting Sometimes I disassociate mine from body and let my mind go. Other times I focus very much on what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:So bring myself very, very much back to the moment and do you have a plan for that before you go in, or does that unfold as the race unfolds with you?
Speaker 2:No, this has to be done in training Right. So training is about learning to endure and pushing your body to the point where you're able to develop these strategies. So it's as much coping with with boredom or negative self-doubt as it is when you know you're in a state of physical discomfort. And I think, most importantly, the most important weapon that you have of all is the knowledge that you have overcome in the past. So every single race, every single Ironman race I did, I wanted to quit, but I always looked back at times in training or other races that I've done when I've wanted to quit and I think when I didn't, then and I went on to achieve my goal, I went on to win or went on to do a PB and can be so grateful that I I overrode that voice. So every time I want to quit, I remember the previous times that I've wanted to.
Speaker 1:And does that translate into life generally, in terms of that overcoming self doubt, do you think I?
Speaker 2:try to seize every opportunity, and I also know that we as human beings have this amazing capacity to to endure, and there are going to be times in life that are difficult and are challenging, a lot more so than others, for others than for me. You know my mind is often self inflicted, you know through sport, but there are those that are enduring far more difficult situations than I am. But you also look to those and people and you see what they're capable of and you can see the resilience and the tenacity and that gives me confidence that I can yeah, I can do the same as well.
Speaker 1:You talked early on. I guess you're interesting in that many athletes who talk to have goals to that sport can change the world at the end of their careers and you almost saw that what sport could do almost before you started your triathlon career in terms of crossing boundaries and and transforming lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean sports inherently selfish. So I don't know if athletes ever go into sport thinking, wow, through this sport I can change the world. No, we go into the sport thinking through this sport I can achieve my personal goal, and I don't think many professional athletes would disagree with that. It's an inherently selfish pursuit. But I do believe that through our achievements in sport we can acquire a platform that enables us to achieve so much more. Brett made me realize that through my achievements in sport I could achieve what I wanted to out of sport. So I didn't enjoy the first six months of being a professional athlete. I just found it to be quite a self-absorbed, quite boring existence.
Speaker 1:And was there really just a risk that you'd given up, that your career path was gone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'd given up a lot we had, you know, I was in ascendance in terms of my position and there were a lot of opportunities and I don't know, I just didn't feel as fulfilled on a day-to-day basis as I thought I was going to as a professional athlete. And I said to Brett look, I think I feel really selfish, I don't know whether I can keep doing this. And he said, look, chris, you, through this sport, you can achieve more out of it than you could have ever imagined. And, yeah, his proposition came true and it's really really an important way of making an inherently selfish pursuit a little bit more worthwhile, at least for me personally. And I realized very quickly when I crossed the finish line at that World Championships in 2007 that I had this fabulous, fantastic platform and we all do as professional athletes. We're all representatives of our sport, we're spokespeople for causes and charities and we have a voice and we can use that as much or as little as we like.
Speaker 1:So many successes and championships and world records and so on, did you have a chance, when you were doing that, to stop and enjoy those, or were you always looking forward to the next challenge down the road, as it were?
Speaker 2:It's a great question. I think my biggest regret is that I didn't enjoy those victories as much as I should have done. I am so proud of what I achieved throughout my career and the moment of crossing that finish line in the various races that I did Memories that will stay with me forever. But you do get so caught up in pursuing the next goal that you sometimes forget to sit back and realize what you and your team have achieved, and so I think, if I was to have my time again, I think I'd do a little bit more. Celebrated after each race.
Speaker 1:And if you hadn't found triathlon? Or triathlon found you? What do you think you might have done If you hadn't had that success in sport? Do you think about what path your life might have taken? I think you would have carried on in terms of the international development work or as a civil servant. What do you think you?
Speaker 2:I definitely would have pursued the career as a civil servant in international development, not necessarily still working within the UK, potentially working for an international agency, so WHO or the UN almost certainly living outside of the UK. I love to travel, I love to experience new cultures and triathlon gave me that opportunity. But international development is something I'm absolutely passionate about and I can see myself having pursued that as a career.
Speaker 1:In terms of your retirement. Actually, you were able to retire after what was an extraordinary, challenging race, winning that final world championship and able to control that decision almost so, for many athletes don't perhaps have the privilege of being able to choose when they retire, through injury or non-selection and so on. In terms of that transition, did that make it easier for you coming out of being a professional athlete?
Speaker 2:The process of retirement, or the decision whether to retire, is an interesting and challenging one, and different athletes will make different decisions. Sometimes they have that agency and others the decision is made for them. I knew intuitively that the time was right for me to retire. I wanted to retire when I'd had the race that I believe defined me as an athlete and defined me as world champion, and 2011 gave me that race. It was a race where I crossed that finish line annihilated. I'd had the race within myself, the race of my competitors. I'd overcome more than I could have ever imagined. I won and I knew that I could leave the sport fulfilled, and I don't think going faster or achieving more world championship victories or Ironman victories would have given me any more satisfaction than that race did. And so I knew that the time was right to retire. Like you said, retire on my own terms and since that date, I have had no doubts. I wouldn't have said it's been easy the period of transition in life never is but it was the right decision.
Speaker 1:And do you think athletes are aware of, made aware enough or prepare enough for that period of transition or career management, or whatever we wish to term it?
Speaker 2:Athletes are not Ireland. So I think it's not just the athlete that needs to support themselves. I think that sport needs to be available to them, whether it's through federations or agents or peers, mentors. All athletes need support and they need to be mindful that the career is always going to as a professional sports person, always going to be finite. They're going to have to transition. I don't usually like the word retire. They're going to have to transition away from the sport at some point and, yes, sport equips you with the skills, but you've got to be able to use those skills and to transfer those skills and to articulate those skills to others to enable you to use them and maximize them. So I do think that athletes, even when they're at the height of their success, need the support to be able to transition, and that's in terms of employability, but also, for some, in terms of life skills. They've been doing their sport from a very young age and have been cocooned from quote unquote real life, and so it's the life skills as much as as well as the employability that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:For me, the easiest thing would have been to have carried on, because I wasn't injured. I was at the height of my success. I was financially secure, it was in my comfort zone, it was something I was good at. But that doesn't make it the best decision and sometimes you have to take the path that scares you. And retirement or transition scared me. I was stepping out into the unknown. I was stepping away from the public identity that I'd acquired. I was stepping away from routine and structure and self-validation, financial security, all of those things. But I knew deep down that that's why I needed to do it. I needed to challenge myself and I needed to carve out that new path before that control was taken away from me.
Speaker 1:And you're now global health man, Wellness. Thanks for the power.
Speaker 2:Get your title right Global Head of Health and Well-Being Park Run. For Park Run, yeah, I've been so blessed since I retired. I think I was fortunate to have had a career before professional sport which is equipped to me with skills and experiences, qualifications, confidence that I can then use an augment all the things I learn as a professional sports person and bring them all to bear on my new kind of career path or paths. So I do a few different things. My principal career is Global Head of Health and Well-Being for Park Run. I originally came on board Pro Bono for them.
Speaker 2:It was a gratuitous meeting where the founder of Park Run, paul Sinton Hewitt, back in late 2012 after the Olympics, and he said, oh well, we'd love to get someone on board to establish the Junior Park Run. And I said, well, pick me. I said, look, I'd love to be able to do that for you. And so 2013 developed the strategy to launch and then roll out Junior Park Run across the UK. So there's 270 Junior Park Runs now across the UK and the operations team, fantastic, and all the volunteers take care of the kind of delivery of those events.
Speaker 2:Over the past few years, park Run's mission has been nuanced to better reflect what we want to do. So we want to be a lot more proactive in engaging those that are less active and who have health conditions in Park Run, both as walkers, runners and volunteers. So our mission is now to create a healthier and happier planet. So my role is to basically operationalize that mission and deliver on that. So I develop all of the interventions, all of the research around engaging marginalized groups and those that are otherwise excluded from more traditional physical activity offerings, and it's a global role.
Speaker 1:So I guess, take that box for you in terms of taking sport to other places across the world, and where are you involved there at the moment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, prior to our daughter being born, it was a five-day-a-week role. Now I work three days, so my capacity to focus on all of our 21 territories around the world is limited. So I'm very much focused on UK, ireland, south Africa and Australia at the moment. That's not to say we're not considering all the other territories, but just focusing on those that are largest and most well established. So I don't travel as much, but I am liaising regularly with our leads in those different territories.
Speaker 1:And Park Run is amazing stuff I think I saw across social media even in Australia working with the prison service and I mean Park Run is very different to how perhaps people have visualized it as it started out, but how it's evolving.
Speaker 2:I think, of all the things that I've done throughout my life, being part of an initiative to establish Park Runs across the secure estate in prisons essentially has been the most fulfilling and gratifying. And had we been approached by a prison maybe four or five years ago, I think we would have just said no, it's not really what we do, but we're so intent on reaching those that have fewer opportunities to participate in physical activity. We were open to the idea of establishing those secure estate Park Runs. So now we have 16 in the UK and Ireland and then one more now launched in Australia, with many, many more in the pipeline. The demand has been overwhelming.
Speaker 2:The support from UK government has been fantastic, from partners.
Speaker 2:It's been a real collaborative effort and it's been something that I'm incredibly proud and very, very feel very, very privileged to have been involved with and working with the research team now to actually evaluate the initiative, both in terms of the implementation so how is it being delivered and in terms of the impact, because it's so important.
Speaker 2:We can't just implement an initiative without that detailed insight into what's happening on the ground, but the anecdotal evidence is that it's having a hugely positive impact across a range of measures, not only for the prisoners themselves but also for staff and the families of those that are incarcerated.
Speaker 2:So we're hoping that the quantitative and qualitative research kind of validates our assumptions. But yeah, it's really, really exciting and for me, I can combine both my passions and, really importantly, work with a fantastic team of people, like-minded group of people and an organisation that works very flexibly and there's a lot to be said for that because I think it would have been very, very difficult for me to have gone from essentially being my own boss, albeit in a quite a structured existence, to then having a 9-5 job in an office where I clock in and clock out and have to wear a certain kind of uniform or whatever. So part-run is very mindful of the fact that there's work to do and you have a role, but you can achieve in that role in many, many different ways. There's lots of different ways of working and they're very, very accommodating of that and I think, as a former athlete especially, I'm really, really welcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very productive for them as well. It's fantastic to hear, and I guess, just a couple more questions, if I can. The podcast Game Changes about trailblazing, extraordinary, fearless women. You take lots of those boxes really, but when you look back in 30 years or so, what do you feel will be the biggest legacy that you will leave?
Speaker 2:I think we all have an opportunity to leave a legacy, not just sports people. Each and every one of us. And my life has been like this amazing tree that's branched in many different ways, so I'm hoping that every single branch I can impact people positively. What I hope is that through my sporting achievements, I show that we're capable of so much more than we ever think, and that also translates into the other areas of my life in terms of. I think people generally are capable of so much more given the opportunity. So I think now all I want to do is ensure that as many people are blessed with the opportunity to explore what they're capable of.
Speaker 1:Wow. Thanks so much to Chrissy for taking the time to talk to me and openly sharing so much about her journey in sport. What an utterly extraordinary woman. I'd love to hear what you think about the Game Changers podcast, so please do neither review or give us a rating. It makes a big difference and it will help us to spread the word about these amazing women in sport. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe to the Game Changers and you can find out more about all the guests at promoteprcom. Next week it's Sally Monday MBE, the current head of England hockey, who has just been appointed to one of the most senior roles in sport the CEO of UK sport. It's a fascinating conversation where Sally talks candidly about her achievements and challenges at hockey and her hopes for the future of British sport.
Speaker 3:It's interesting. I've been asked where my leadership journey started, and I really believe that my leadership journey started when I was about four. I remember that one of my earliest memories is being about four stood in my bedroom with my three sisters with my hands on my hips, thinking I am so fed up with being told what to do. I would like to make the decisions. I want to be in charge.