Jumping life’s hurdles (From The Argus)

Jumping life’s hurdles

6:00am Saturday 30th January 2010

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Across Sussex, new year’s fitness resolutions are beginning to unravel. Well-intentioned regimes are starting to slip, and exercise bikes are slowly adjusting to their new lives as improvised clothing rails in the county’s spare rooms.

If the achievements of one of our finest Olympians don’t bring on a pang of guilt at our collective lethargy then perhaps nothing will, but Sally Gunnell says it’s perfectly natural to slip into old habits after a frenzied January.

“We all have these big ideas at the beginning of the year, but it’s very hard to go out and run for 20 minutes if it’s not something you’re used to,” says the lady herself, who lives in Steyning.

“So I think one of the things is setting yourself something to achieve. If you’ve got something to focus on – whether that’s Race For Life or something for charity – in the spring or the summer, it makes it much harder to give up. Also, it’s important to join in with friends.

If you’re going to meet somebody, you’ll think twice about not going out.”

Gunnell helped launch the inaugural Brighton Marathon, which takes place on April 18, and says this could prove the perfect focal point for the more ambitious runner.

“A lot of people are feeling uneasy with the financial situation being what it is, and maybe people aren’t feeling too good about themselves, so exercise really is a good way to beat the January blues. It’s about a feeling of achievement.”

If this sounds like the kind of talk pitched at stoking a fire in one’s belly, then it’s with good reason; Gunnell’s principal career is now as a motivational speaker. Much of her work takes her to big companies where she talks to staff about her own not inconsiderable achievements over a career that saw her shoot to fame as “Super” Sally Gunnell at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. She remains the only woman to have held the European, World, Commonwealth and Olympic 400 metre hurdles titles at the same time.

In conversation, Gunnell has a relaxed, easygoing charm that seems to stand in stark contrast to the crazed, over-zealous team-builders that tour the nation’s conference centres.

“It wasn’t something I’d thought about when I first retired from my athletic career, because I felt there was no way I could stand on a stage and perform – it just wasn’t me. But actually it was [fellow athlete] Roger Black who said people would want to know my story, and hear about a successful woman. The first one I did was at IBM in front of an audience of 3,000, which was absolutely terrifying, but I love it now.”

Personal fitness has become increasingly important in the work she does with these organisations. With global unease pushing staff wellbeing yet higher in the priorities of top organisations, Gunnell has been putting together stress-reducing fitness plans for staff. But she maintains it’s the psychology of achievement that remains the most important element of what she does.

“It’s really easy to talk yourself out of a situation – we’ve all got this voice in our head that’s the ‘what if?’ voice of doubt. But it’s about controlling that voice and using it as a positive. That’s what you have to do on the start line when you’re petrified as hell, but it’s equally applicable to all kinds of things in life.”

The chances of a premiership footballer being taken seriously on the corporate stage seem rather slim. A youth spent in dormitories with other footballers may not allow the best window on the world of business, but Gunnell, originally from Chingford, Essex, had a nascent career at an accountancy firm when Olympic glory beckoned.

“I suppose it has helped in being taken a bit more seriously,” she says.

“I’d been working in that office environment until Barcelona, and I think it kept me in touch with what work is about – people’s dynamics and that sort of thing. Obviously, I was away from it for quite a few years, but I really did enjoy getting back into it again.”

Gunnell’s stratospheric athletic success was in a field whose contenders have a limited shelf-life. Sportsmen and women from every discipline face the looming spectre of their advancing years, and some deal with the move back into civilian life better than others. Gunnell distinctly remembers feeling her time in the sun wouldn’t last long.

“I must admit that when I crossed the line for the last time and retired from the sport, I did think it would only a matter of time before that was forgotten. So it’s astounded me that we’re 16, 17 years from Barcelona. But people still know me and want me to do things. I’ve had to reinvent myself in some ways – naturally having kids [Gunnell has three children] and being an active parent has changed things – but it’s been really surprising.”

She’s particularly well known in this neck of the woods for the work she’s done for charity. Before her athletic career ended, she became a Red Cross ambassador, and has since campaigned to promote a healthy lifestyle, undergone the ritual humiliation that is [BBC It’s A Knockout-style show] Total Wipeout (“my boys love it and said I should do it”), and found a local focus in the Chestnut Tree Children’s Hospice near Arundel and the Sussex Air Ambulance.

Gunnell admits finding the time for her charity work can be tough, but this was made easier after she left her role at the BBC in 2006. Much has been made of her parting of ways with Auntie, for whom she worked first as a pundit and then as a sports reporter and interviewer; press reports at the time suggested she’d been thrown in at the deep end in her role, with little training from the corporation, but she says her time there came to a very natural end.

“From a personal point of view, I found it hard leaving the kids behind nearly every weekend. As they were getting older and starting to take part in sport themselves, it became really difficult. I’d done it for eight years, and it’d got to that point where it wasn’t clear where I would go next. The press misread it in lots of different ways, but I just had to weigh things up. I loved going to the major championships, but I did find it really hard when it was pouring with rain at a little old meeting and I just wanted to be at home with my family.”

Gunnell met her former 800m runner husband Jonathan Bigg when they were both junior athletes in the 1980s. The latter lived in Brighton, and Gunnell jokes that they “paid for the Dartford Tunnel” with their visits between Essex and Sussex. After “falling in love with Brighton”, the couple settled in the city, moving further out as the family grew. With such a pedigree, is it inevitable that Gunnell’s three children will lead sporty lives?

“Who knows?” she says.

“With three boys you have to keep them active anyway, if only to get the energy out! But the oldest one is nearly 12 now, and loves his football. But I do really want sport to be part of their lives – it does keep boys on the straight and narrow, and you learn so many lessons from it. I’ve been doing a lot more driving, though...

I don’t know how I would do anything else at weekends now except operate the taxi service!”

* For more information about Sally Gunnell’s motivational speaking, visit www.sallygunnell.com or call 01903 815510.

* Argus readers can raise money for good causes in Sussex by running the marathon in support of The Argus Appeal. Our own charity still has a number of places left but they are very limited, so hurry. For more information, email elsa.gillio@ theargus.co.uk

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