WHERE TO FIND YOUR POWER

Kirsty Gallacher reveals what she’s learned from world sports stars

As a sports presenter who has talked to her fair share of athletes at the top of their game, Kirsty Gallacher knows a thing or two about strength. ‘It’s an all-encompassing thing,’ she tells me. ‘If my body feels strong, I feel mentally strong.’ That’s why, she explains, exercise has become such a crucial part of her life. A self-confessed gym addict, in lockdown it has been running and weight lifting that have helped maintain her mind/body equilibrium. ‘Exercising does something to me,’ she says. ‘It’s obviously a chemical thing, but it also makes me feel like I can conquer life.’ Gallacher is talking to me from the Berkshire home she shares with her boys, Oscar, 14, and Jude, 11, just a day after the first anniversary of her friend Caroline Flack’s tragic death. ‘She was supposed to be coming to stay with me just before she died,’ she says. ‘I tried to spend the [anniversary] day being productive around the house, but I would just burst into tears thinking about her last moments and the pain she was in.’

No stranger to heartache herself, in the past five years, since her divorce – a word, incidentally, she is reluctant to say – from former rugby player, Paul Sampson, Gallacher has been on what she describes as ‘a journey to strength’. ‘I think when you go to that difficult, dark place, it’s about how you cope with getting back up again,’ she says. ‘We all go on these journeys in different ways – and those bad times are huge lessons in resilience.’

A big part of her transition to self-acceptance, she tells me, has been working on her podcast, Stripped Back Sport, in which she interviews top athletes and discovers what it is that drives them, and how they have learned to overcome their own setbacks. Happily, in a much better place – and also a new relationship – Gallacher shares the lessons she has learned on where to find your power when you need it most.