Kate Richardson-Walsh: Finding your personal super powers
SA: Hello and welcome to The Gamechangers Podcast where you’ll hear from trailblazing fearless women in sport. I’m Sue Anstiss and in this episode, it’s hockey legend, Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE. With a record 375 caps for her country, Kate was England and GB Captain for 13 years, culminating in that superb Olympic Hockey Gold at Rio in 2016.
Was such a privilege to catch up with Kate as she talks openly about the highs and lows in her incredible career and her future plans. I was lucky enough to meet Kate at the very trendy Groucho Club in London. It was quite a warm day, so the air conditioning is a little loud in the background but hopefully that won’t detract from what was a wonderful conversation with one of our country’s best-known female athletes. To start the interview I asked Kate about her first memories of picking up a hockey stick.
KRW: My first real proper memory would be playing hockey properly at school so it would be, it was a PE lesson, secondary school on the red ? pitch at Priestnall School in Stockport and I think Mrs Kinder, our PE teacher, would have dragged out the rubbish bin full of wooden hockey sticks that had seen better days and we all just grabbed one. And I think that was my first proper hockey session.
My sister and I both watched my mum play as little girls but there was no junior section or anything at my mum’s club so we couldn’t play but we did have little kindof sawn-off hockey sticks that we would terrorise people with on the side-line, but we didn’t properly play until we were at secondary school.
SA: And did you love it straight away do you think?
KRW: The thing I loved the most is that it was with other people because up to that point I’d been doing gymnastics and swimming and although you are around people in both of those sports, it is quite solitary, I found it quite solitary. I remember in gymnastics my overriding memory is just being left with a mat saying, just go and do as many backward walkovers until you’ve cracked it. And the same with swimming, the session would be put on the float at the end and you would just go and follow what it said, and you would just be up and down doing that. So it was the first time I was around other people and I think that’s the thing I loved.
SA: Once you knew you’d found hockey was that the sport for you then forever do you feel?
KRW: I kept swimming, so I was swimming at Stockport Metro and then I started swimming at Stockport Swimming Club and so probably up to the age of about 14, was still going to swimming training 2 or 3 nights a week. Because hockey still then was only really at school and then I joined Didsbury Greys Hockey Club. But other than that I did athletics and netball and rounders at school but other than that we didn’t have the opportunities to really play anything else. I look now when I go into schools and I see them doing rugby and football and fencing and goodness knows what, we just didn’t have that opportunity, but I did every sport I guess I could at school.
SA: You and I are both involved with Team Up and the Women’s Sport Trust about teenage girls dropping out of sport. Was that a risk for you do you think or was that never a consideration?
KRW: Was it a risk? No I mean I did go through the teenage years of being an absolutely pain in my parents’ backsides and … yeah, I was trying to find out who I was really and not really getting anywhere so just copying and falling in line with other people. So, going to the park, drinking, doing things I shouldn’t have been doing.
[0:03:51]
SA: Very reassuring for other teenagers that that was the case!
KRW: Not for parents but yeah, and that came to a head when I was dropped from the England under-16s, so I would have been aged 15. And I guess it was at that point, now looking back, it was a crossroads. I had to either decide to really look after myself, play hockey a bit more seriously, make better decisions, make better choices, or carry on doing what I was doing, and being a bit of a rebel.
And I think if I had chosen that path and just continued to go to the park I would have fallen out of love with sport and yeah, I would have been one of those statistics of teenage girls that drop out of sport. I think it’s that easy.
SA: And what made you do you think make you choose that path at that time? Did you have your eyes set on a goal for the future?
KRW: I hadn’t up to that point and it was being dropped I think gave me a bit of a wake-up call to say, actually I’m so upset about this, I’m so embarrassed and angry and actually why am I feeling so emotional about it? Well, I actually care. And so I think and I had my parents, were just brilliant at that moment, just kind of asking me some really good questions and asking me what I wanted to do about it and supporting me in making really good choices from that point on.
So, choosing which college I went to, which hockey club I joined. My dad, love him, drove me and my sister 1hr 45 there and back, twice a week, to go to a new club. So without that support and without being able to make those choices and decisions, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you now.
SA: I was going to ask you that actually. I don’t know her but I kind of know her through social media, Twitter and whatever but clearly they have as parents been a massive support to your achievements to getting you there.
KRW: Both my mum and dad, mum and dad are both really sporty, it was the norm you know. Weekends were spent at the club, Didsbury Greys and Didsbury Cricket Club was in the same club so we would be there in the Winter watching hockey or somewhere watching cricket. And yeah, they’ve always whether they can be with us watching or not, and they’ve always been supportive of myself and my sister.
SA: Who were your role models do you think at 14,15,16?
KRW: I mean, the one person I really vividly remember on TV was Sally Gunnell. She’ll slap me when she sees me, making her feel old, but yeah, the ’92 Olympics just the moment of her crossing that finish line and the utter relief I think initially and then joy of achieving her dream and you know the BBC do a lovely montage when you’re on the podium. That whole thing it really gripped me but realistically it was probably the people around me. So, my mum and my PE teacher Mrs Kinder who she’ll tell me off calling her Mrs Kinder still, but Bev. They were both just really sporty women, loved their jobs, they had families, they just gave their energy to other people all the time. So I’d say those two.
[0:07:02]
SA: It’s fantastic to hear isn’t it the impact they had. You were a captain at 23. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought that you were a captain so young and then onwards for 13 years, so I guess so much pressure for so long. Did you ever wish you could just have been a member of the squad and the team and not have had all that additional pressure to perform?
KRW: I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question before. Yes, I think I would be lying if I said no. There were absolutely moments when I just wanted to … I don’t know, maybe really let my hair down a little bit. I’m, like we all do, have a little bit of a wild side and I did feel, but particularly in the beginning, I really felt like I had to hide certain parts of myself. Wrongly actually it turns out, but it took me a long time to really understand that. Me just being genuine and authentic actually would help other people be able to be that as well.
But it took me a long time to realise that and so I could be a bit cheeky at times and a little bit mischievous and that was okay because that’s part of me but it’s just picking and choosing your times and understanding the group and the people around you. But yeah, there were times when I wanted to take that responsibility off me but for the most part I just loved it.
SA: And were you a very different captain at the end to where you were at the beginning? How do you feel you changed your style or manner of being a captain?
KRW: In my head it’s like night and day, the difference between what I was like in the beginning and the end but I mean it would be interesting to see what other people I know, to ask them. I guess the core of me probably stayed the same so what I believed to be my role, so setting the best example that I could , encouraging other people to be the best that they could and helping them be that. Trying to be that link with the coach and the players and I think that in its essence was what I tried to do the whole way through.
I think how I went about that changed. I think I went on a bit of a journey as a person, as we all do, just learning about how I can be the best of myself and that I can’t be all things to all people all the time and to recognise my ego and to understand that the strengths of the group and how many leaders we had in those squads.
Particularly in the lead up to London and Rio in particular and they need to be able to lead as well and that’s part of my responsibility as captain to encourage that and support that. And I think probably the thing I kick myself about is I genuinely only really feel like I’d got into my stride as captain in literally the last couple of years. But I guess it’s the way of life that you are never finished. It’s never, you are never the finished article.
SA: You coached as a captain, you obviously follow the captains that you follow, you look at what they’ve done. Did anybody give you guidance on being a great captain in the role?
KRW: No I did follow, I thought I did do, that’s my kind of go-to behaviour is to copy so I copied the captain I thought had done an amazing job prior to me. No, I just read a lot. I read lots of different books, I listened to lots of different interviews and read articles and just tried to formulate my own ideas and I guess leadership in general, and in business in particular has become such a massive topic and there are so many books. So that’s kind of helped be part of that journey I suppose.
[0:10:41]
SA: A bit of the podcast is looking at overcoming challenges and failures and I guess there is that time, you were a very young captain and then not qualifying for Athens and so on. So looking back now, how do you think you personally coped with that disappointment and as captain for the team as well?
KRW: I mean I still feel it, it’s so long ago but it is still so raw. Because it was such a moment in time, I don’t think we ever believed that would happen as that group and for some of those women that was the very last time they would put on that international shirt and represent their country or have the opportunity to even try and be selected for the Olympics and that’s where it all ended. And so it really was a fire in me. Instead of it pressing me down, I used it to continually fire me up that if I ever felt low or that I couldn’t, I was there representing them and I had this opportunity and I had to take it. My mum gave me a brilliant picture once, it was lightning with a quote underneath and I can’t remember the whole quote but it was something along the lines of something, you have to make the best with which ever situation you are faced. And that I think is how I’ve tried to think.
There’s so many things that go wrong, all of the time, on the hockey pitch, off the hockey pitch, in life, in relationships. Just trying to make the best of it because often so much good comes out of those dark times.
SA: And do you think things have changed? It’s fabulous advice as well in terms of life advice isn’t it? Taking that on board for all ages. What made the difference then on towards Beijing and then London etc. Do you think there was a shift in what happened with the team, obviously funding made a big difference?
KRW: Funding made a massive difference. It was quite literally the …I don’t know what to say, it was the calm after the storm. 2004 happened and it was awful and then 2005, so a year later, we were awarded the Olympics for 2012 and we had Danny Kerry come aboard as a new coach and in that moment, it was just some of the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together. And not immediately, it took a long, took a good few years to get there but at least started to be formed and started to see where we could go and how it might look and that funding, that increase in funding did really, really make a difference.
SA: One of my questions was going to be, looking ahead to Rio, what had shifted there? Do you think it was a shift in mental training, physical training or was it a gradual process from Beijing that culminated in Rio?
KRW: It was very gradual. There was one meeting when we started our centralised programme for the first time in 2009, when we sat, and for the first time in this way, we sat and talked about our vision, our purpose, who we wanted to be. And we had done it before, we’d had mission statements, we’d had kind of goals but this felt very different, this felt like a bit more of an empowerment, a bit more of a responsibility for the players which was brilliant of Danny and the staff to kind of - we were very much included in conversations on the programme - how many times a week we would train, the length of the sessions we would do. And therefore we bought into what we were going to be about and from the very beginning and so in that meeting in February 2009, we established that we wanted our vision to be Gold and that’s when, slowly but surely, it all started to change.
SA: And was that different for women’s to the men’s squad at the time? A separate way of managing or was that England GB hockey?
[0:14:43]
KRW: No it was very separate. Both squads train how they wanted to train. I think they were given the opportunity to be centralised, to train full-time. And it’s different because it’s, they were in a very different situation to us and I’d had a conversation with a couple of the guys and a couple of the Dutch guys as well more recently and they couldn’t understand why we had a centralised programme. And I was like, well you are for the most part, for the elite level, you’re paid to play club hockey, or domestic club hockey, you’re paid to play and you have been for quite a few years, to a lesser or greater extent.
I have always paid to play club hockey. You are able therefore to train kind of like a full-time athlete. You’ve not had to work, whereas we have and although it’s not enough money that they’re getting from a club to sustain a full-time job, it had meant that they could be more flexible with their work. And we’d not had that so we needed to train full-time, we needed that funding and we needed time together and so it was different. But I recall a conversation in 2009 in a lift, at the European Championships in Amsterdam and one of the – I’m not going to name them – one of the Dutch male players and one of the men’s RGB England players rather kind of laughed at what we were doing, which I really took to heart and probably it did fire me up a little bit for the foreseeable future.
But there was no ability to see where we were coming from and what we needed and where we were going as women’s squad. Yeah, maybe it is different to what they needed but we genuinely believed this is what we needed and thankfully results came relatively quickly to prove our point.
SA: Proof is in the pudding. Says a lot too.
KRW: Well it was 2010, so we’d only been doing a year centralised programme when we won our first world level medal so we won our first Champions Trophy Bronze. And we won a World Cup Bronze and then 2011, we got another Champions Trophy Bronze and then 2012, Champions Trophy Silver. So we were constantly on podiums that we’d never been on before. And so it was, the proof was in the pudding, yeah.
SA: Looking at Rio, I’ve been really interested to hear that you were almost in a bit of a bubble, all that kind of coming away from Twitter or LinkedIn, or wherever you were at the time. Do you think that made a significant difference? That coming away from it at the time for Rio.
KRW: Yeah, I mean it took us a long time to have 100% agreement and if we hadn’t had 100% agreement, we wouldn’t have done it. But as players yeah, we decided after lots of really good open conversations from players. In both ways, some players say, actually I want to stay on social media because this is my opportunity to create a bit of a platform.
Be on the world stage and we had to listen to that point of view, those of us like me, I was just like, well, two weeks without it, I can do without it. Actually the best way to get a profile for yourself is to go and win a Gold Medal. And I think the best way to do that is to come off it but we had to listen to each other. And the good and the bad and the positives and the negatives and after, I think it was about, two or three meetings, we did all decide.
I think it had an effect on us in terms of we were quite good with not having phones at meal times and stuff because that’s the time you actually listen and talk to each other and chat about stuff going on in your life in a really informal way, and if you’ve got your phone in front of your face you’re not doing that.
[0:18:25]
SA: Welcome to my house!
KRW: Well most people’s lives, I’m really bad, I’m just as bad, so that was important and I think some people in our squad had had some real negative interactions unfortunately on Twitter in particular. I’d had a little bit on Instagram on social media and the girls spoke really openly and quite emotively about that and how hard that was, getting some of that negative feedback.
The other effect I think maybe we hadn’t considered before was it had an effect on the opposition because talking to people afterwards that we’d played against, were saying, wow we saw you all send out that last Insta post, that last tweet, and we thought, oh right, they’re serious.
SA: You were co-ordinated, in agreement, you were a united team that gave that message?
KRW: Yeah, absolutely, and you know, I’m under no illusions that maybe some of the players of an evening had a cheeky, especially when it started going well, you know, maybe they did have a cheeky look. And you know, that’s absolutely fine, we’re not Big Brother house. You’re human beings and particularly as it was we were winning every game, I can imagine how tempting that would be to go and have a cheeky look. But just as long as the intent and the conversation had been had, I think that was the most important thing.
SA: And how do you deal with the negative side of social media now because obviously every now and again it rears its ugly head?
KRW: I mean it’s definitely gotten less. Initially, after Rio in particular, it was pretty hideous for about a year. Sporadically. Yeah, not a lot compared to what other people were getting, my goodness. But it hurts. I think actually just acknowledging the fact that it hurts and why it hurts is good and then report and then block. And then I just try and move on. I think actually the worst thing we had, and I don’t remember how it got out to the Netherlands. It’s when we were playing in the Netherlands, after Rio, it must have been sent to Bisham Abbey, hockey’s training base, and there was a handwritten letter and kind of scriptures and things taken and printed out from the bible and highlighted.
Yeah, that was the hardest, wow, you’ve really taken some time and effort. I find it, I’m not religious, so I don’t perhaps have as great an understanding as I should have, however I do believe that all religions are about loving your fellow human and that’s when I really started to struggle with it. And I think it’s great that people have really strong faith and religious beliefs, but I don’t belief in any of those faiths that its core is their hatred, because of someone’s got a different sexuality to you.
SA: It’s love. It’s something that people obviously struggle with and it’s good to get some thoughts on your having gone through that too. Moving back to Rio and that amazing final, couldn’t have been more dramatic, I realise you’ve told the story many times. Very dramatic for us as spectators at home, huge excitement, not necessarily the result you’d have wanted on the day there. Can you take yourself back now to how you felt and again, I’ve heard just the level of practice and rehearsal that had gone into that moment, did you have a level of confidence as they stepped forward to take those penalties?
KRW: Yeah, I mean to the point where when the final whistle went, I celebrated maybe a little bit too much, because I genuinely believe in that moment, we had this. And I believed that because we had beaten the Netherlands on penalties at the European Championships the year before, we’d also beaten them on penalties in the European Championships in 2013. So, in the lead up to Rio actually major tournaments, we’d had a really good set of results against the Dutch. So, and they’d just won on penalties in the semi-final against Germany on sudden death, literally by the skin of their teeth.
So I know that they’re feeling nervous, anxious, under pressure right now and so any positivity from our part, at that moment, was going to have another effect on them. So, and coupled with the fact that I know how much statistical analysis, video analysis, practice on the field, the goal keepers and our penalty takers had all done.
SA: And more so than any other team do you feel?
KRW: I think other teams practice, whether they practice in the same way I don’t know. Our players would practice taking the walk to the 25-yard line which is the hideous part frankly, that. It’s lonely and your legs start to shake and you’re aware of how fatigued you are. And your mind starts to tell you that you can’t do this, and the goal keepers are going to save it and it’s al, about psychology and the physical preparation together. That’s where I’m not sure whether we had the advantage. I think we probably did.
SA: It’s the nemesis, that whole history of penalties being the point at which we haven’t succeeded in the past.
KRW: And I think, what a load to bear. If you’re an amazing, male England footballer and it goes to penalties, I can imagine immediately you’re not celebrating, you’re like, Oh! Because you know what is in the mind of almost every … exactly, and what the headline… you’re almost probably writing the headlines the next day and just some of the awful things they’ve had said about them, written about them. People do - burning effigies and all sorts - because they’ve missed a penalty. But now I think Gareth Southgate and his team I think have done a fantastic job.
SA: Mental health and mental approach. One of my most abiding memories of the whole Games, is you’re on the podium holding that medal in both hands, gazing at it and so, so emotional in that moment. So as I ask you now, can you remember how you were feeling in that moment?
KRW: Just so grateful and proud. It was almost very quick flashback through everything that I’d been through to get to that point and then not just me, also reflecting all the women around me, the women that weren’t there who hadn’t been selected. The women that had gone before us . It was just that whole journey I think was just in that moment.
SA: Look we’re both welling up a bit here but when I look at that picture it’s just you and you are surrounded by noise and the celebration but it is just you in that moment. And another thing I should probably know the answer, I think you’re between Susannah and Sam, I was wanting Helen to be next to you but that’s just the line. She was one away wasn’t she?
KRW: Yeah, number 8, number 11 yes. Susannah, bless her heart did ask if we wanted to swap and we said, no, look this is the order that we are in and somebody actually captured a really nice photo and when we both got our medals and we just kind of leaned back behind Susannah, gave each other a little high 5. We have that photo at home which is nice.
[0:26:14]
SA: And I guess then we can move on to the closing ceremony at Rio which, not gets overlooked but you’re carrying the flag as well. So on top of that it could be more so. How did that feel for you?
KRW: It felt very special , particularly because we’d been so successful as Team GB again. Done something that maybe nobody thought we could and bettered the medal count in London and just to represent those athletes, incredible athletes and then to be kind of in the belly of the stadium waiting with all the volunteers with all the flags and just all the athletes from all the other countries. So I had my photo taken with Simone Biles and ? who I both think just epic! They’re just the most extraordinary women and I think that made it that much more special for me. I am here amongst them who I look up to and that they’re incredible athletes.
SA: And coming back to you Kate, I think sometimes you wait and wait for something and it comes and then there is that anti-climactic piece after. Did you experience that or was it an ongoing sort of rollercoaster of joy as you came back?
KRW: I think the first week was just madness, I just don’t think we slept or sat down. It was really fun and being in a team is that it’s much more fun and because we knew each other so well, however tired we were or grouchy we were, you’d be okay because my teammates get me and they know what I need right now. But then I think Helen and I took the decision to go and play in the Netherlands and so – when had we sorted that out? About five months before I think, with Bloemendaal and I think it was the next weekend after we came back we had to go to Germany on a pre-season trip.
No we didn’t play with Bloemendaal but we went to go and watch and be part of the meetings and meet the girls and be part of the team, and they did a really nice celebration in our hotel room. They’d put balloons and things everywhere.
SA: Shirts?
KRW: Yeah, they made shirts yeah, they were so good and they were just amazing and I think that was the best decision we could have ever made.
SA: To move yourself from the madness that was.
KRW: Yeah, and I think for lots of the girls who were still here, some who were going to continue playing, there was the reality and then I just felt they were going into a war, I remember seeing on Twitter, at awards every week. Incredible to celebrate that success but actually in some ways I was quite glad to be removed from it.
[0:28:56]
SA: You came obviously back and you were very much the first gay couple that had played and won Gold and so on. So was there an element of you and being asked a lot about that rather than the sport? It’s important to recognise you are those role models too. Was that a concern to you that that became more of a story than what you’d achieved?
KRW: I don’t think it concerned us at the time because we were very aware of the magnitude of it and there are still, today people living in the world who will be killed, jailed, because of their sexuality, and so actually just two people just talking about it, in an open way was important. However, I think probably some of our team mates understandably and I know Danny has said, I think the first thing he got asked in walking to the media zone after we’d just won that Gold Medal was, Isn’t it great Kate and Helen have won as the first same-sex couple? And he was, I think it was the Daily Mail.
And he was so angry and it’s really hard because he’s not angry that we are a couple, but so much more than that so that’s when it’s that there have been moments when I’m just like, it’s really uncomfortable. There’s more here. Do more, be better, look at the wider thing and this is a lot that’s part of it but there has been a lot that’s just focused on that and that’s hard.
SA: Sport - we work a lot with rugby and cricket, it has been a place where women can very comfortably be themselves. Be lesbian, be bisexual but not so for men across team sport and I guess that makes me really sad. There must be many men that are not living a happy life that they would wish to. Do you think that will change any time soon?
KRW: I think we are moving towards that place. Do you know, even in women’s sport, there are still lots of women living a double life and that’s completely up to them of course. Nobody has to be open with their private lives, it’s their private life. So, you can keep it to yourself, but …
SA: But it’s sad that they can’t be themselves.
KRW: It’s that, it’s if you feel that you can’t be then I think it’s, things need to be looked at. So I think women’s sport is better, particularly at grassroots level, I think it’s much better but I think at elite level it’s still quite closeted actually.
SA: Because perhaps it will impact in theory your sponsorship, profile, media, all those things?
KRW: Yeah and do you know what, maybe they don't want the whole focus to be about the fact that they’re bisexual or lesbian and actually just want to talk about sport, exactly. And I think that’s probably quite a big fear and a real fear and then for men there is that plus the stereotypical traditions of what it means to be a man. And what it means to be a man that plays sport and I think that the next generation coming through will demand that those traditions and stereotypes are broken. And I think, unfortunately, I think it is just time. I think people are becoming to be more well educated but that’s why education in schools is so important.
And it’s not about promoting anything, it’s not about talking about anything’s better or more than, it’s just an acceptance of difference and in order to accept difference, you have to learn about it and understand it. And I think that has to start at the youngest age. I know that’s a massive debate at the moment with Government in terms of what relationship education etc and I genuinely believe that’s where it needs to be.
[0:32:45]
SA: Talking role models, you are role modelling in terms of Women’s Sport Trust and profile of female athletes and schoolgirls, LGBT and you work with Access Sport for Disability and ? and mental health and so on. Do you feel the pressure to be a role model across so many different things too?
KRW: No, our agents always say you can’t do everything. I was like, why, because I really care about all those things? And I think you can’t be across everything but it’s about people and actually just people having an opportunity and being accepted for who they are and being able to flourish and thrive. And so I think all of those charities that you mentioned are about that and so that’s why I would love to do things with them. And some of it’s because I was misinformed and I was uneducated and particularly on disability sport, thinking that, yeah, hockey’s great! Hockey’s for everybody! And it absolutely was not. And we are still closing our doors, still closing our doors off to …
SA: One of my questions later in terms of hockey being for all we think of it is quite a white, middle-class sport. Can/will that change?
KRW: I think we have to give everybody the opportunity to make it change Whether it will change or not isn’t really, you can’t force people to play hockey but I think you have to make it (accessible) absolutely and available to everybody and that is still very frustrating for me and I think lots of good work is going on at grassroots, I think unfortunately facilities I think does play a part, and lack of facilities. However, I think we’ve become a bit elitist in terms of, oh we have to have a water-based Astroturf. I played on red ?, it’s basically concrete. You can play on any surface, so let’s just get people playing.
And at the elite level we just have to make that more accessible and less and less is on free to air TV. I think BT Sport do a brilliant, brilliant job but I wouldn’t be watching that if I was growing up. We didn’t have it so - the pay per view - so ticket prices, let’s make it so people can’t turn it down, that people want to come and watch it at all costs because it’s so cheap and it’s a great day out. Rather than try to pay for everything through tickets, I think that’s just wrong.
SA: Moving on to your transition from sport, we have touched on that in terms of your role-model work and so on. How have you found that transition over the years from coming out from full-time professional, training with a squad, knowing your routine each day, to life, and a very busy life? But how do you feel that’s been?
KRW: I’ve found it really hard, probably still find it hard. It’s the instability I think and the uncertainty and that’s just for me personally, so I think other players who have gone into full-time role. Georgie Twigg is a good example, she’s now working at Bird & Bird. And she has that stability, she knows where she’s going to be every day for the hours that she needs to work and she plays club for Surbiton, and she has her routine.
SA: Q not clear
[0:36:26]
KRW: Yeah I think so. And I think it’s that, we’ve started to do a bit of work around values and identity and actually re-establishing that, because my circumstances have changed and does that mean that I’ve changed or actually do I just need to go back to who I am, what I believe, what I enjoy, what I don’t like? And started to rebuild my life again.
SA: And is it harder because Helen’s going through that with you at the same time or is that a bit of both? Comfort but also there’s two of you in the house having been these professional athletes and now not?
KRW: It’s helpful in that I know she understands so if I’m just having one of those days, I can just say that, and she knows exactly what I mean. I think the challenging part of it is, I guess it’s a financial instability and if we are both thinking, what do we want to do? There’s not one of us who’s that’s that kind of, steady. We’re both freelance.
SA: Chat
KRW: No, but it’s right and we are getting to a point where she’s doing her Master’s degree so she’s busy doing that but I think we are now getting to the point where we’re going to start building our own business consultancy and using all the things that we’ve learned as elite hockey players and outside of that. And Helen with her psychology around helping people thrive, whether it’s in a working environment or a school environment, just getting the best out of people.
SA: When I look at a list of all the things you are doing that you do pro bono, that you do for free, ultimately you have to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. Looking back now, is there anything you feel you could have done to better prepare you for this world or is that not possible?
KRW: I mean, I think Emma, love her, spent many hours with me supporting me in exploring different avenues and trying to think about what that would be. I tried PR, I wasn’t good enough at that. But I’ve tried all sorts. I’ve tried sales, I’ve tried marketing, I’ve tried brand-management and I liked elements of all those things but it never really gripped me and I remember Sarah Winckless came in once to talk to the group about what she’d done after she’d retired and she talked about this portfolio career. And I thought, this all sounds a bit posh, I’m not really sure I can do that.
And actually it’s the thing that I know that I actually really do want is actually a little bit of that. Not being in the same place every day and I think that is something that I now genuinely love and I am getting there. Emma, I retired nearly 3 years ago, but she’s still, I still see her now and we’ve just started our - Helen and I started the athlete’s coach programme with England Hockey - and I still see her through that.
So she is still supporting me. I don’t think she could have done any more. Having people like Sarah Winckless come in and speak did open my eyes to this opportunity that I didn’t even know was possible and inevitably it is about people and it’s about whether that’s in business or hockey, is just helping people be the best that they can be and I think that’s it basically.
SA: I had a really interesting conversation, Atlanta, then Rio 37 Gold Medals and some of those team medals and so your value as a Gold Medal Olympian, if you’re an A grade Olympian you’re okay. You’re on the speaking circuit, on businesses. Fabulous success has made it more competitive for athletes also.
[0:40:21]
KRW: Yeah and so Sir James Cracknell I remember said that, Don’t you dare think that winning this Gold Medal is going to set you up for the rest of your life. That’s not what it will do and that’s not what it’s about, and he was totally right. Actually that is just the last little cherry on the top and actually it’s all the things that you have become, learned, make you.
SA: Fabulous that you got that cherry, athletes that have done the same and never won, never medalled in their sport for whatever reasons so you have to feel the value has to be in the process and so on as well, doesn’t it? And now that you are coaching, you and Helen are both coaching now and your team, best year ever I think I saw. So is coaching something that you see for the future? What are your aspirations on the coaching?
KRW: I was just literally, just before we started, was Whatsapping with Sophie Brey and we were just talking about how even though we’re out of the centralised programme now, the domestic season gives you a little bit of stability and that’s what coaching has given me back a little bit of that continuity, that two nights a week and at the weekend I’m about hockey and I can be doing other things around it that’s about hockey.
And I have loved this season coaching with Sarah Keller who I played with at Slough for a little bit and then against when she played for Ireland and she’s coached the England under-18 women’s team, girls’ team and so I’m learning lots from her and just lots from the players and I just, my whole sense of being glows a little bit when I walk out onto the hockey pitch on a freezing cold, rainy Monday night, I feel like I’m home. So it’s been good.
SA: And the national coaching is something you would look to do in the future or are you just enjoying it where you are now?
KRW: I kind of feel like where I end up will be where I end up and maybe I will become more aspirational. I think it would be incredible to be any national team coach but I think, at the moment, I just want to keep developing as a coach and improving as a leader in that role and how I function as being a coach. And so I am just going to focus on that and then, you know, what will be will be.
SA: You’ve obviously lived and breathed hockey for so long, so young women coming through where you were at that crossroads in your life, have you any advice that you would like to impart to them almost?
KRW: I think that when I go to speak in schools, my biggest thing I say is just try and work out who you want to be and that will change, and it will develop and your ambitions will change and sometimes it feels like day-to-day but the essence of who you are is the thing to really think about and be curious about and give yourself time to be curious about that. And I think I just didn’t do that. I just was so intent on fitting in at whatever cost that that was nearly at a cost to me and I see it everywhere I go in every school. And it’s just if you can be true to yourself you will not go far wrong in life.
SA: I’ve had the pleasure of listening to you and Helen speak in terms of corporate business talks that you do and also some of the podcasts, you talk about finding your super strength. I guess is that a similar kind of magnifying that but in an adult sense too?
[0:44:00]
KRW: Yeah, I mean it was a revelation when we did it with the team. You’d think, you’re 31 and 28, best players in the country would know, what their super strengths were. We just didn’t.
SA: As individuals or in a physicality playing?
KRW: As individuals. I got really annoyed at the beginning that all my super strengths seemed to be off the hockey pitch. I was like, I’m supposed to be here to play hockey, I must have some super strengths. But that is my job so that’s my value, that’s my worth in this team, that’s who I am and that’s what my teammates need from me. And actually in that way they can demand it from me and so in me knowing my strength and you knowing my strengths, we can both get the best out of me. I can help get the best out of you and then to collectively all those little percentages add up to us all thriving and the team thriving. So when we got there, when we did that, it was just amazing and one of the biggest differences, I think.
SA: And when did that happen?
KRW: So the first time we did it was I think it was 2011, I feel it was in San Diego with our psychologist at the time, Tom Cross. It was hard, really hard. As hard as it is to share anything with a group of people, to stand up and say I am exceptional at this, it makes you cringe a little bit. But it’s so important to own that.
SA: And women, a little bit in women, the whole imposter syndrome, I’ll play it down, be a bit humble because that’s a more attractive trait than to stand up and own it.
KRW: Yeah, absolutely and I still have imposter syndrome now. I don’t think I can stop the internal voice when I’m speaking to a company and I’m, are they listening to me? Whilst I’m speaking! I’m not sure this is coming across really well.
SA: I heard someone say recently that anyone that doesn’t have it is probably a fraud or they’re a complete psychopath, we all have it, it’s just accepting that is as we are.
KRW: I’m reading a book at the moment by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth, so he wrote The Power of Now, and he’s talking about that voice in that it’s the recognition of that voice that it’s separate to you, that that is mindfulness and awareness and that’s where you will grow. So I am aware of it.
SA: You’re listening. A couple of final questions, as the podcast is called The Gamechangers and it’s about trailblazing, fearless, extraordinary women and I guess looking back in another 30 years’ time, you’ve obviously had a huge impact on this sport, but do you ever think about what you’d like to leave as that legacy?
KRW: Isn’t it (a massive question) yeah. I think no, I think it’s more the legacy would be that I’ve helped people and that either on a very small scale or a large scale, to really be the very best version of themselves. I think that is what I feel is how people helped me and how I hope I can help other people and if that means a woman in Yorkshire feels that she can go back to a hockey session once in a blue moon and be with some like-minded people who will support her, then that is it.
SA: How could you not be inspired to be the very best version of yourself, having listened to the rather brilliant Kate Richardson-Walsh? I so enjoyed our conversation and very much look forward to following her career in the years ahead.