Transcript

DAME KELLY HOLMES:

The highs and lows are so extreme in sport. I mean, really extreme, and I don't think in normal life you really experience those, apart from bereavement, which I have from losing my mother four months ago. I know how that feels, and so actually, at that point, when I hadn't had that in my life, sport was everything. And I got to the point of depression, self-harm, looking in the mirror and not actually wanting to be there. Did I ever expect to be like that, being an ex military sergeant? No. Being an international athlete? No. But I'm human, and somewhere down the line, it just got on top of me. I didn't want to be here.

And actually what happened was, the reason why I'm quite a strong advocate of helping people transition, is because when I finished, I've finished with two gold medals. I was the only British person to have done that in a long, long, long time, and the only female ever to have done it in Britain. And six months after, I still felt really lost. Suddenly, my identity, I could tell people, I'm an Olympian, I'm an Olympic champion, no, sorry, I'm an Olympian. I'm an athlete, I do this, then I was real enough-- oh, I open shops here, oh, I get asked to go on shows, oh, I get I go to schools. And suddenly, you're just like, well, who actually am I? I have no idea. So I got on a really bad low again.

I've started to speak to sports people that have been to those Olympic Games with me-- I'd been to three Olympic Games-- who had nowhere of going. They weren't in the public eye, they had not won two gold medals, they weren't having these doors open, but suddenly, they're dropped.