Giving it all up to realise their child’s dream
Elite athletes such as Becky Adlington might never have succeeded without parents’ sacrifice and Bank of Mum and Dad, writes Pippa Field
Kay Adlington still dedicates most of her time to family, in the form of her grandchildren, but it is a world away from the 4am alarm starts, taxi service and chlorine-filled blur of the years she and husband Steve spent supporting daughter Becky.
Those painfully early mornings and endless car trips would eventually culminate with Becky stunning the world with her double Olympic swimming gold at the 2008 Beijing Games. “We didn’t have a clue what we were letting ourselves in for, to be fair,” Kay told Telegraph Women’s Sport, before joking: “Had we known, we might have tried other sports!”
The task was made harder with Becky’s two older sisters, Chloe and Laura, also swimming competitively. “Sometimes we would have all three of them swimming at different galas,” she continues. “But again, you just deal with it. Steve had his own business, I was working at the time, and it was like, ‘How on earth are we going to do this?’ But you do, because you know they want to do it.” Whether it is nurturing an Olympic champion or championing your child’s efforts at a junior parkrun, everyone will understand the commitment undertaken to support your loved one’s sporting passion. For those whose interest does not waver, the sacrifices for those parents and carers grow larger as the stakes increase, despite no guarantee of success.
When Becky’s talent started to really show entering her teenage years, training sessions were increased to 10 a week, six days a week and the 4am alarm wake-up call became the norm – as did shelling out more than £200 each on racing costumes that “if lucky, you might get two or three competitions out of ”. Kay also gave up her job so that Becky could be ferried around.
According to national charity Sportsaid, which supports aspiring British athletes and includes Adlington, Dame Jessica Ennis-hill and Laura Kenny among its alumni, before Covid-19, the “Bank of Mum and Dad” committed more than £8million to support their children over a 12-month period. The average spend by a Sportsaid athlete has risen by £2,067 since the previous decade.
As well as the financial strains, the stress put on the rest of the family is another factor to consider. For the Williams, they had the “crazy idea” to split the family up in 2013. It meant dad Allan and younger sister Kirstie would stay in their Welsh village of Pontllanfraith and Lauren and mum Tanya, would relocate to Manchester.
Tanya would even give up work while they both lived together in a
‘As a parent you feel guilty for the other child, but there wasn’t really any choice. Ellie needed a lot of help’
‘Mum plays it down a lot! She would be in the car 5.30am to 5pm, watching TV on her ipad or just doing nothing’
caravan for 18 months. The reason? To help Lauren, then 14 and too young to live in athletes’ accommodation after being offered a place on the GB Taekwondo academy, chase her sporting dreams. “Our mindset was to give Lauren that opportunity,” recalls Allan. “She had been kickboxing since the age of four, and who can deny a child their dream?”
And so began an extraordinary 18-month period. Family time was snatched here and there, but for the most part it was Lauren and her mum, acting as chauffeur for the hour-long trip to training. Such was the need to save money, that Tanya would normally sit in her car all day, waiting to ferry her daughter to school or training.
A return to the caravan did not offer a great deal more relief, either. For example, they would take trips to an old shower block in the evening, the duration of their wash dictated by how many 20ps they had for the timer. Did there ever come a time when it nearly became too much? “To turn around and say sorry that’s it, after all those years of doing what she loves, I could not take that away from her,” Tanya says “I just knew that was not an option. I knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, by the time she was 16 she could move into the athlete’s house and I would come back home.”
Any initial suspicion that the passing of time may have perhaps dulled memories of the hardships is replaced by another theory – that love reduces a sacrifice into merely a gesture – when Lauren, now 22 and a two-time European champion, interrupts: “She plays it down, a lot! She would literally be in the car from 5.30am to 5pm, watching ITV or BBC on her ipad, literally just doing nothing.” It was the same show of love when Lauren’s parents turned down her offer to pay off their mortgage when winning more than £54,000 at the World Taekwondo Grand Slam finals in 2018. “A parent is always a parent, to support and guide a child in the right direction. I’ve never turned around and said this is what I’ve spent, you need to pay that back,” explains Tanya.
Yet the role of a parent can become distorted with the added responsibility of being the coach, taxi driver, banker and mentor all rolled into one. It is a situation Paul Challis, father of Tokyo Paralympic swimming hopeful Ellie, can sympathise with. When she was 16 months old, Ellie developed meningitis, having to have both legs amputated below the knee and both arms below the elbow.
The 17-year-old, also a Sportsaidsupported athlete, is now a world medallist, although the swimming journey has not been without its challenges, single dad Paul tending to Ellie’s medical needs and ferrying her to training, all the while making sure not to neglect her twin sister Sophie, who is eyeing her career in horse racing.
A recent move to Manchester has, however, enabled Ellie, who announced herself on the international scene with a bronze medal at her first World Championships in 2019, to be more independent. “I’ve become just a parent after all these years of taking her everywhere. It’s really enjoyable,” Paul says. “As a parent you feel guilty for the other child, but there wasn’t any real choice, Ellie needed a lot of help. They’ve both reached a really great point in their lives doing what they wanted to do. I feel quite successful.”