Golden girl Yarnold’s sadness after quitting
This is a good time to go, says Olympic champion Prospect of training for 2022 Games too tough ‘I stood up and told my team. I got really teary and had to leave the room’
Lizzy Yarnold, Great Britain’s most successful Winter Olympian, last night announced her retirement from competitive sport.
The double Olympic skeleton champion revealed she would not make an attempt to defend her title at Beijing 2022, following six months plagued by injury.
Yarnold’s competitive career began in 2010 after she had been identified through UK Sport’s Girls4gold talent search scheme.
Just four years later she was an Olympic champion, at the Sochi Games, but her career high arrived last February at the Pyeongchang Games, when she became the first skeleton athlete to win consecutive Olympic gold medals, and the first Briton to win two Winter golds.
A slipped disc in her back has kept her out of training since and, while she underwent successful surgery in July for the injury which she said had left her unable to sit or stand for long periods, the prospect of another Olympic training cycle has ultimately proved too much.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph at her former comprehensive school in Maidstone, Yarnold, 29, said the decision was made irrespective of her injuries and despite suggestions she made last month that she had not ruled out competing at the next Winter Games.
“For the last month or so I’ve been in a really happy, positive and physically good place,” she said. “At Pyeongchang, I didn’t want to go into the race thinking about retiring and then, afterwards, I didn’t want to make a rash decision.
“So, now, when I’ve gone through all this rehab for the past six months, I’m retiring for the right reasons – not through injury, not for a bad competition, or any other reason but because I love the sport, and I’ve loved 10 years of it, but I think I’m ready.
“It’s probably fair to say it would take me longer to get back to competitive level but I think on top of that my vestibular issues [inner ear damage that causes dizzy spells] were happening more and was affecting me more.
“The fact that I would not necessarily have a big goal to go after just proved to me that I’ve had a really good crack at it, and this is a good time to go – although I’m still sad.”
Last month, Yarnold said that the World Anti-doping Agency’s decision to reinstate the banned Russian federation and athletes had caused her “relationship with sport to change”, and she admitted the prospect of competing again against Russian athletes had cast a cloud over her future.
“It’s almost too big an issue to really frame someone’s personal decision on, but I can’t shy away from the fact it has had a big impact throughout my career,” she said. “Hearing of all the Sochi allegations years after the fact was emotional and now for Rusada [Russia’s antidoping agency] to be reinstated has been difficult to deal with. So many athlete voices aren’t being listened to. If I was still competing this year, I would be hugely emotional, competing against Russian athletes who were banned, so it leaves a sour taste in the mouth, for sure.”
Despite having taken a year-long sabbatical following her World Championships win in 2015, Yarnold ruled out any chance of a comeback yesterday.
“The 2022 Games is so far, it’s such a big commitment so, no, I’m good. When Alastair Cook recently retired, he said he got teary telling his team-mates, and I thought: ‘That is ridiculous, you’re an idiot, how can you get like that?’
“But then I stood up and told my team a few weeks ago, saying ‘I’m really proud of you and I wish I could carry on, but I’m just a bit too old’ and I got really teary and had to leave the room straight away.
“That feeling when you leave the changing room, walk out to the start block, with your jacket done up and your salopettes on and crash helmet in hand – a feeling of almost growing two inches taller because of being empowered, feeling in control. There’s something so magical about that, so I will miss that. But it’s also really tiring.”
Yarnold says not spending half of the year training and competing abroad will free up time to explore her options – including a possible career in accountancy.
“I did ask my friend who works at HMRC if she could set me up a week of work experience – I feel geeky admitting that,” she said. “I’m doing a week at the BBC learning how to edit. I don’t know what I’ll love or hate, you just have to try.
“Being away half the year has been a bit of an issue, so going to watch a bit more rugby and football would be good and also just being a normal person, seeing my husband and being at home would be nice.
“I look forward to still trying to speak about and support the antidoping standpoint and women in sport through the BOA [British Olympic Association] athletes’ commission, speaking at schools and I want to be more involved in mental health charities, too.”