Fastest Girl on the Track

Olympic Showdown

I look around the room at the other seven girls. I have been looking at them in waiting rooms like this for the last few years. This time it is different, nothing is the same as an Olympic final. What on earth am I supposed to do for ten minutes before the biggest race of my life? Looking around at the other girls, they are all doing something different. Mila the German is prowling round like a panther, she has a stare that would completely shit me up if I was not already as nervous as I can be. Layla the Kenya is also walking around, but much slower looking far less angry and intimidating than Mila. Ebba the classically blonde Swedish girl, wait are all Swedish girls blonde? No, I don’t think so, now I am trying to think of a Swedish girl who was not blonde, what about the girls from ABBA? I know it is the colours of their flag, but if a fashion designer had chosen the best colours to suit classically blonde Swedish girls, they would have chosen their bright blue and yellow one that she was proudly wearing. It looks like Ebba has no clue what to do either as she is doing a completely superfluous stretching routine. Buffy the crazy American, sorry eccentric American, is bizarrely going through an intense shadow boxing routine. I get the impression that she wears red, white, and blue and stars and stripes virtually all the time, whether she is about to compete or not. The American flag is painted on both her shoulders and the side of each thigh. She is always the most patriotic person I have ever come across, but this week with the games being held in her home City of Los Angeles, she has been more American than Elvis Pressley, eating apple pie whilst playing baseball on the fourth of July. If she was not here as a competitor, I am sure she would have found a way to be here as a cheerleader. She has her headphones in, I cannot hear her music, but I imagine she is listening to Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. In case you are wondering, she was named after the Vampire Slayer. Femi from Jamaica is one of my friends, she has done so well to make her first Olympic final, after a few niggly injuries earlier in the year. She is bouncing around on her feet like she could break into the Charleston or the Jive at any moment, but instead randomly jumps up and down every now and again. Somehow, she still makes that look cool in a way I never could. Are Jamaican’s born cool or is it on their national curriculum at school, or do the only let the cool ones leave the Island? My best friend in here is Roxana from Romania, she is doing what she always does before a race, throwing a rubber ball, that is slightly smaller than a tennis ball, against the wall with one hand and catching it with the other. Her repetition of that can be almost hypnotic to watch and she tells me that it helps her stop over thinking about the upcoming race. The only other girl who is sat down is the impossibly gorgeous Roos from Holland, she is easily good looking enough to walk into a role as a Bond Girl as soon as she is finished winning medals at Major Championships. The Dutch Orange uniform perfectly goes with her lightly tanned skin and long black hair, but Roos would look stunning if she was wearing a bin bag. Then there is me, the skinny rock chick from Carlisle. So pale that at airport security they are likely to check if I am a vampire, maybe that’s why Buffy and I don’t get along. I am sat down too, but completely lacking in the calmness that is oozing out of Roos. I have my headphones in, working my way through the same pre-race playlist I have listened to or the last few years. Right now, I don’t think I could stop my legs from bouncing up and down even if somebody paid me to stop.

I look around the room, fixing my glare on each of them for a few seconds. I reckon Roos and Layla could still beat me even if I run my perfect race. Ebba and Femi should not beat me whatever I do. Buffy, Mila and Roxana could beat me if I let them by making mistakes. None of them will admit it, but they will all be worried about me. I am the fastest finisher in this race, and they all know that I can win races without them ever seeing me coming.

Ever been so close to your ultimate dream that you can almost touch, taste and smell it all at the same time? I have been here before, twice. My third Olympic final and this one is mine. I never make excuses, but this time I do not have any. Fittest I have ever been and as far as I can tell completely injury free for the first time in a long time. My Mum will be watching nervously back home, still not really understanding athletics or why I love running twice around a track so much. Dad was always the one who got it. He was the one that got me to fall in love with middle-distance running. He is in a nursing home now. They probably have him in front of a television, but he won’t recognise his own daughter on the screen. He doesn’t even understand the concept of a daughter anymore, let alone know that I am his. Alzheimer’s is shit. He is still big part of why I am here though and the version of him that I have in my memory will be the one I am trying to make proud tonight.

Now is probably not the best time to be looking back, but I cannot help it. The dreams, the doubters, the supporters, the critics, the ecstatic wins and the crushing losses. The bullying at school, the abuse, the court case, all whilst watching my Dad fading away before my eyes, becoming someone I did not recognise.

Finally, the official comes in and tells us it is time. Ready or not it is time to run in an Olympic final. My goosebumps have goosebumps. I gather all my things and exchange little fist bumps with Roxana and Femi then make my way out of the room. When we get to the tunnel where we enter the track through, the officials make us stand in lane order. I have been drawn in lane number six, I prefer one of the lower numbers, it makes it slightly easier to just tuck in at the back of the field on the first lap, which is where I like to be. But it is not that big a deal at all. The annoying thing though is Buffy is in lane five, so I must stand right behind her in the tunnel. I would much rather be standing behind Roos or Layla who just stand there calmly. Instead, Buffy jumps around and throws kicks and punches as if she is auditioning for a Karate Kid remake. Then comes the screaming, I literally cannot tell what she is saying, but it is loud. We are let onto the track one at a time with gaps of maybe five seconds in between. After Roos was let on to go to her lane four, Buffy waits. At least she has stayed still at last. I know exactly what she is doing, the phrase drama queen does not come close to being strong enough to describe her. Despite America having by far the strongest track team in this Olympics, she seems convinced that every single one of the eighty thousand spectators have only come to see her. A dramatic entrance is the only way to walk onto a track for her.

‘If you wait any longer Buffy, your roots will start showing,’ I say.

‘Fuck you English,’ she says as she briefly turns her head to face me. ‘This is my house!’

‘You’re American? You kept that quiet.’

She did not reply this time, unless you count giving me the finger as she set off walking up the tunnel. Have to give it to her, she got exactly what she wanted, the biggest cheer of the night. Now I have no skin left, it is all goosebumps. I don’t wait, I walk out as soon as I get the nod from the official, the noise gets even louder as Buffy waves her arms and then holds her hands to her ears. I’ll never get to compete at a home Olympics, so I pretend the cheers are for me, even going as far waving and blowing kisses to the crowd. Even though I know I am the pantomime villain of this piece.

Normally as I walk to my lane, I would have my headphones in and music blaring. This crowd noise is too good to miss. I keep my headphones off and soak up every second of the unreal atmosphere. This is what all the training sessions are for, all the early mornings, the hill runs, the gym sessions that left my legs shaking, the multiple sprints that sometimes left me vomiting. It might well be Buffy’s house, but I had an invite to the house party. I felt like I belonged, no rabbit in the headlights this time, no feeling of being happy just to be here. This was my time.

Taking a look at the crowd as I walk to my lane, I see plenty of them taking pictures of me. Even though I am not an absolute superstar, I am one of the most famous athletes in the world. Even people who never watch athletics know who I am and can recognise me. I only ever wanted to be known for running fast, but life does not turn out exactly the way you want it to. Ever stop and catch yourself wondering; how the hell did I end up here?

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The early Years

Primary School Sports Days

I wasn’t always a bitch. I did not always wind people up with my prickly, competitive ways. I used to keep my opinions to myself, or maybe I did not have any. I did not always have a problem with authority figures, my primary school teachers thought I was a lovely little girl.

One thing I do always remember doing was running. At primary school I barely stood out from the crowd at all, sometimes I felt like if it was not for my red hair then the teachers would barely have noticed me or separated me from the crowd in their head. Sports days were different though. That was my day.

In my last year of primary school, I stood on the start line for the one lap race. My heart was racing faster than it had ever done before. I had won every race I had ever entered in primary school, the one lap had become my speciality over the previous three sports days. This would be my last race in primary school. I was racked with nerves, despite all my success, or perhaps because of it. What was the point of being sports day girl if I lost my last race, the most important race. Some of the girls had growth spurts since the previous year, plenty of them had longer legs than me. Maybe one or two of them had been practicing their running all year and gotten so much faster. Before my over thinking reached even more epic proportions Miss Humphries snapped me out of it by saying; ‘Marks, get set, go!’

Boy did I go. Running with so much fear of losing that it was if I was running for my life.

Sports day was also the only day I ever saw my Dad at school. After we had gone back into our class to gather our things I rushed back out to find him, I knew he would be waiting for me.

He swept me up with a big hug.

‘You made so many mistakes, but you still won by half a straight,’ he said as he held me up.

‘Sorry I went off so fast, I was just so nervous. Then I got tired so wanted to see how far ahead I was so I could work out what to do for the rest of the race,’ I said as he let me go. ‘That’s why I looked back,’ I continued. ‘But I know I should never look back.’

‘Like I always say, no such thing as winning and losing, just winning and learning, and if you can keep winning and learning at the same time even better. Pizza for tea tonight.’

‘Vegetarian,’ I beamed.

‘Of course, if you want that.’

‘You know that I do,’ I said as we set off on the walk home, which was only around half a mile but always felt like an epic adventure to me.

‘Definitely reckon you are going to be a middle-distance runner,’ Dad said as we walked. ‘Probably not going to be explosive enough to be a sprinter, but the eight hundred and fifteen hundred metres are much better races anyway,’ he continued. ‘So many tactics involved, you can use your intelligence there. The sprints are over in a blur and the long distance races are always boring until the last couple of laps or so. Around two or four minutes that is the perfect length for a race, more than enough time for the excitement to build, but short enough that every moment counts.’

‘It does look cool.’

‘My heroes when I was your age ran those distances too.’

‘Coe, Cram and, and erm,’ I say slowly.

‘Ovett,’ Dad couldn’t resist finishing off the trio. ‘Britain haven’t had a world class middle-distance runner since then.’

‘Apart from Kelly Holmes!’ I almost shout.

‘Of course, apart from your hero.’

‘You really think I could be that good?’

‘Nothing to stop you. Like Bruce Springsteen you were born to run.’

‘What distance did he run?’

‘He was a singer, remind me that me and your Mum need to increase your music history appreciation, cannot have you going to high school and embarrassing us,’ Dad said with a smile and a playful tap on my shoulder to make sure my kid brain realised he was joking.

That summer my life changed forever. Mum finally relented and agreed I was old enough to join the local athletics club. It was difficult to tell who was most excited out of me and my Dad. The club even had a cool name, Border Harriers. It was overlooked by Carlisle Castle, which made it even cooler for me as I had been round that Castle so many times with Mum and Dad and loved it every time.

Going to the club for the first time for me was what it would have been like for most kids to get their first ever tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I could not have been more awestruck if I had just got to Hogwarts via platform nine and three quarters. Everything I dreamed of was there. Sand pits for jumping into, javelins, shot putts, discuses, hammers, high jump bars and even poles for vaulting and those huge crash mats to land on. Even better than all over them was the beautiful running track. When I first stepped onto it, I crouched down to touch it with my hand, to be honest I did not just touch it, I stroked it as if it was the most adorable puppy that I had ever seen. It was just like the tracks I had seen on TV and I could not believe I was finally going to get to run on a proper track.

I enjoyed jumping and throwing things, they were lots of fun. The only thing I did not try was the pole vault, that looked scary to me and still does, why would anyone do that? Despite how much I enjoyed jumping and throwing, it was always running that I truly loved. How fast could I go? Could I get to that finish line first? It was so basic but I think that’s what appealed to me, the purity of it. At that stage I did not care about what distance I was going to run, I just wanted to run.

During the school holidays they ran sports camps for kids. Five days a week for five hours each day. Looking back on it now, I realise many of the kids attended because parents saw it a cheap childcare, but I loved every second of it. We played loads of different sports, and I liked them all, but anytime I was doing a different sport I was always looking forward to the next time that I would be running on that track. For some of the kids there five hours with a short dinner break in the middle of the day, was a long time to be playing sport, and too much effort for them. Dinner was the highlight of the day for many of them. For me five hours was never long enough, and I barely noticed what I had for dinner each day, although looking back on it I think my Jaffa cake addiction could be traced back to the contents of my dinner box during that summer.

Big School

After my favourite ever summer holidays, it was time to make the step up to high school. Nothing prepared me for the seismic change from primary school to secondary school. After seven years of being with the same other thirty kids, being in the same classroom with the same teacher for a year at a time, suddenly I was plunged into chaos. Having to move classrooms every hour, to find different pupils and a different teacher in every room I went in. The site was enormous compared to my primary school, I had to work out for myself where the toilets were, where to get my dinner from, how to get to all these different classrooms, whilst all the while remembering to walk on the left hand side and not have my bag on my shoulder, unless it was a rucksack, then it was designed to be on the shoulder. All these changes when I was eleven years old, so basically and adult right?

PE lessons were the thing I was most looking forward to at high school. That excitement increased further still when I met Miss Sanders the young, cool PE teacher. She was my first girl crush. Miss Sanders ran the football, hockey and netball teams, and I played for all of them. Each of them gave me a chance to run around a lot and be useful to the team even if my skill level was not the highest. Within a couple of weeks of starting high school, I was pestering Miss Sanders about when we would start doing athletics, she assured me that we would do plenty of athletics after the Easter holidays. To eleven-year -old me in September, Easter felt like forever away.

Just a Miss as promised as soon as we came back after Easter, we started doing athletics. Then in the middle of July along came sports day. My red hair and pale skin had attracted the attention of the mean girls in year seven, nothing too bad at that stage, the much more traumatic bullying was to come later. Sports day gave me the chance to put some of those mean girls in their place. It was no longer called the one lap race, now it was the four hundred metres. I looked at them on the start line, determined to beat them not just for me but also for everyone else that they had ever made a cutting comment about. After years of dominating my primary school sports day, I had to prove I was the fastest girl on the track all over again. I took great pleasure in smoking the mean girls as I ran away from the whole field in the home straight, winning by at least thirty metres. Dad was there making his annual trip to school, delighted as always with my latest victory.

The first couple of years of high school was the time that I started to seriously get into my running. It was not just something I liked to do; it became my favourite hobby. The sessions at the club were twice a week. On the other days I would always run around the block when I got home from school, and at the weekend I would go down to the track with Dad and run. If I was not obsessed with running and the Olympics already then one day during the summer between my first and second year in high school made certain that I would be, August 11th 2012.

One Saturday morning around three months before that first high school sports day, I was just about to head downstairs for breakfast when I heard Dad charging up the stairs. He banged on my door just as I was about to open it anyway.

‘We got them! We got them!’ He screamed and I had never seen him so happy.

‘What? What?’

‘Olympic tickets!’

‘Oh my God!’ I screamed and then we hugged. ‘Which ones?’ I asked once we stopped hugging.

‘Last day of the athletics!’

‘No way? That was my first choice! They’ll be the relay finals, and loads of other stuff,’ I beamed and was literally jumping up and down.

‘Women’s 800metres final as well, that will be a great race.’

‘Oh my God that’s awesome.’

That is still the giddiest I remember being and the happiest I ever saw my Dad, apart from when he saw me win some races. Mum could not quite understand our excitement, but she was happy to see us both so delighted. For the rest of that first year of high school it had been genuinely difficult for me to concentrate on schoolwork because all I could think about was going to the Olympics.

When the time finally came, we took the train down. We went down a day early and stopped in a travel lodge close to Northampton, just far enough out to not be too effected by the ridiculous price hikes of the London hotels, but close enough so we could get there early the next day. On the train ride down, we talked only about the Olympics. Dad told me stories of some of his favourite Olympic athletic moments, most of which I had heard before, but I did not mind hearing them again. One he even told twice, just an hour or so apart, which I thought was weird but still did not mind.

Trying to sleep in that travel lodge was like trying to sleep on Christmas Eve, I think I got a couple of hours or so in the end. Despite the lack of sleep, I was still bright eyed and alert when it was time to head down for breakfast, before getting the train to London. We got there way before any events started, so that we could have a look around the whole Olympic area and take plenty of photographs. Several times during the day I was hit by a surreal feeling, it was like I could not believe that I was at an Olympics. As if these could not be the real Olympics in the way that the ones I had watched on the television, read about or seen films about. At times I was saying over and over in my head – ‘I am at the Olympics.’

We got to the stadium way before the first event, but it was awesome just to be sitting in it, looking around and reminding myself once again that I was at the Olympics. As the stadium started to fill, the atmosphere built into something that I had never felt before and perhaps not since. The first event on the track was the men’s 5000m, if there was a spare seat in the stadium when that started, I could not see it. Britain’s Mo Farah was one of the favourites for the title, having won the 10,000m at the start of the athletics week on what became known as ‘Super Saturday.’ Twelve and a half laps seemed like an awfully long way to run to me then, and still does now. The atmosphere built as the race developed, all the main contenders remained together in the leading bunch for the first eleven laps or so. Mo moved his way from the back of that bunch to the front of it with little more than a lap left to go.

‘Here he goes, here he goes,’ Dad said, whilst gently grabbing my arm, as soon as Mo made his move around the leading bunch.

When Mo hit the front many of his rivals tried to get back in front of him as quickly as possible, to disrupt his plan, but he would not let anyone past. It felt and sounded like every one of the eighty thousand people in the stadium was out of their seats and cheering Mo on as he battled to keep his lead on that last lap, me and Dad were stood up and screaming ourselves hoarse. A few times it looked like Mo might be overtaken but he battled hard to keep the lead and with about fifty metres to go he seemed to find more speed from somewhere and we knew he was going to win. The noise for those last few metres was unreal. Dad and I hugged as Mo crossed the line and then we high fived a few strangers who were close to us. In amongst all the triumphant chaos I had the thought that I would never get to compete at a home Olympics, it would not be in London or anywhere else in the UK again for way too many years for me to be running in them. It was a bizarre but brief moment of sadness at such a happy time. I remember quickly reminding myself that I was a long way from ever competing at any Olympics.

Next on the track was the men’s 4x100m relay final. There was no British team involved, but that did not really matter because we had a chance to watch Usain Bolt run in the Jamaican team that won the race comfortably, giving Bolt his third gold medal out of three events, just as he had done four years previously in the Beijing Olympics. He had only really been on the scene for five years or so, but Usain was without doubt the biggest star in athletics and one of those sports stars that even people who don’t like sport had heard of. It was great to be able to say that we had seen him running live, in the flesh. After that came the men’s 4x400m relay where the Bahamas caused a bit of a shock by beating the Americans, the Brits finished fourth, agonisingly out of the medals, but the majority of the crowd still enjoyed seeing the Americans getting beat.

Throughout the session there were some field events going on. The final for the men’s Pole Vault and Javelin were happening, two events that continue to blow my mind. I cannot get my head around why someone would want to pole vault in the first place, but their ability and complete lack of fear always astounds and impresses me. I have had a few goes at throwing the javelin over the years and I am decent at it, but the force required to launch that thing as far as the elite men throw it is beyond my comprehension. Seeing the distances on the television coverage is one thing, but getting to see that spear fly through the air for that far, left the twelve-year-old me completely awestruck.

Next up on the track was the women’s 800m final. Watching them come out onto the track and get ready on the start line made me so jealous. I wanted to be running with them, even though I knew that I would get nowhere near them. Each of them looked like they prepared slightly differently, some sat down, some stood still, some jumped up and down, others ran around a bit. Butterflies started flying around my stomach as if I was racing myself. Even though there was no British athlete in this final I was still completely absorbed by it. I tried to learn from the tactics as I watched but was not able to pick up anything obvious. As was virtually always the case in an 800m final it came down to a mad rush for the line at the end. Russian Mariya Savinova managed to hold off South African Caster Semenya to win gold. The look of joy on Mariya’s face when she crossed the line was the first time I had seen something and known without a shadow of a doubt that was the thing I wanted most from my life. All her hard work had paid off and she had the ultimate glory of an Olympic Gold Medal to show for it.

‘Great race, great race!’ Dad shouted at the end, once again we were both up on our feet. ‘That could be you in a few years, born for the eight hundred metres,’ he said to me.

A lot of twelve-year-olds think they know what they want to do with their life, I knew for sure.

The women’s high jump was going on as well and from our seats we had a great view of that. I loved watching them and I already thought the high jump was fun to do. It was a close final with a lot of tension and the result in doubt till the very end. The crowd were getting really into it, I loved joining in with the slow clapping above our heads whenever one of the jumpers gestured for us to join in with her. They made high jumping look so cool, but I still did not get drawn to it quite like I did the eight hundred metres, besides even at twelve I was fairly sure I was not going to be leggy enough to be a typical high jumper, especially with two short parents. In the end another Russian, Anna Chicherova, took gold by jumping two centimetres higher than anyone else could manage. Her winning height of two metres and five centimetres was another one of those athletic feats that blew the mind of twelve-year-old me.

Last on the track was the women’s 4x400metre relay, an event where Britain did feature and had a chance of a medal, so the atmosphere was close to the heights it reached when Mo was racing. It was USA and Jamaica at the front as expected, with the Americans managing to win the gold. Despite all the noise from the fans the Brits could not quite catch the Ukrainians for the bronze medal and just like the British men they had to settle for fourth place. One thing that struck me watching the relays was how happy the winning runner was because they could celebrate straight away with their teammates, they had not just clinched a gold medal for themselves, but for three other people as well. I remember thinking that must be an amazing feeling.

Even after all the events and the medal ceremonies had finished, I still did not want to leave. After one last look around, we were two of the last people to exit the stadium. We got the train back to the travel lodge in Northampton. The whole time, walking to the train station, on the train and back at the travel lodge for an hour or so, me and Dad talked about all that we had seen that day. Over time I have realised that experiences are way more important to me than things, and that day is still one of the best I have ever had.

On the train ride back to Carlisle the next day, we spent virtually all of it doing our Olympic quizzes. It was the first time I noticed Dad getting a few things wrong, that he used to get right. Poor Mum had to put up with my barrage of enthusiasm when we got home, I talked at her for about two hours about what we had done and seen. Even when she did not understand it, Mum was always good at appreciating my enthusiasm for something and never made me feel stupid for being so excited.

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