Life after sport

On Wednesday 26th June, I was asked to join a focus group made up of an impressive panel of former elite female athletes at the offices of Ernst & Young in the city of London.

The point of the discussion was to help more elite women athletes become exceptional business leaders when they retire from sport. The aim was to gain a deeper understanding of what women athletes might need in terms of support as they begin or continue to make the transition from sport to the next phase of their careers.

Speaking from experience, transitioning from sport to ‘everyday’ life is not easy.

When the discipline and emotional ties of elite sport are removed, quite often athletes have very little idea of how to move forward and find it hard to cope.

This is a serious matter and one that should not be dismissed or over-looked.

I strongly believe that athletes should be made aware from a very early age that competing at elite level will only make up a small part of their lives. They need to keep their eyes and their ears open for opportunities that will help them in their life after sport. They need to plan for the future.

Perhaps National Sporting Bodies should help with this and assist the athlete in finding a worthwhile occupation on retirement from sport? Should it be their duty? Particularly if they have shaped and nurtured an athlete from a very young age and profited from his or her success.

More often than not, athletes live in a bubble. You are completely committed to your sport, to the exclusion of everything else and you tend not to look beyond an Olympic cycle. Nothing is more important. Sport is all-consuming.

Athletes can leave their sporting career with no money, unless they are the top ranked athletes from high profile sports or have personal means. They enter the working world much later than the average person with little or no work experience having dedicated themselves entirely to their sport for so many years.

This is a problem. Although I personally managed to get a University degree before the London Olympic cycle and gained some work experience in my ‘down-time’ after major Championships, I have a four year ‘gap’ in my CV where I trained full-time to qualify for the Olympic Games. In effect, an elite athlete will typically retire at the age of 30-34 and will have had no previous work-place experience.

Fencing has shaped me in countless ways. Elite athletes are self-starters and driven. They have all of the qualities needed to be successful in the workplace. They are, by nature, high achievers, team players, hard-working, committed, disciplined, ambitious, dedicated, organised, resilient, strong-minded, dependable, good motivators… I could go on and on.

All of these skills are transferrable to the workplace yet many employers see retired athletes as a risk, with no concrete work experience for someone of their age. An elite athlete seeking a career in business after the age of 30 does not typically fit in with company employee development plans. In a word, the athlete is considered to be too old at 30!

According to Ernst & Young, research shows a direct correlation between girls’ participation in sport and greater achievement in higher education and employment – so why aren’t more companies jumping at the chance to employ a former female elite athlete? Why aren’t more female athletes being identified and fast-tracked into the working world upon retirement?

I believe you can get an elite athlete firing in the corporate world in a very short period of time. The elite athlete is in a sense ready to go if you give them the right support and training and if it is something that they really want to do.

Businesses need to know that every year elite athletes will be leaving sport. They are going to be eminently employable but there is probably a large percentage who fall through the net.

I was lucky enough to find the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust who have helped me enormously with my transition from elite competition to life after sport. More than that, their support has made me feel part of a team again. I cannot thank them enough.

This is why I was delighted to be invited to be part of a focus group in support of Ernst & Young’s Women Athletes Global Leadership. This same focus group was conducted in Rio and New York to make it a powerful global network.

Ernst & Young ‘get’ the qualities that a female elite athlete can bring to the workplace and they want to support them to thrive in business.

It was comforting for me to listen to the individual yet often similar experiences around the table. I think the network will be invaluable in highlighting the issues retiring athletes face and in helping more elite women athletes become exceptional leaders as they retire from sport.

What a fantastic initiative.