‘I’m so proud myself’ of
How NZ’s best high jumper soared out of the darkness Keeley O’Hagan wants to open the book on a raw chapter of her life in the hope of steering others away from a pathway that almost consumed her. She talks to Marc Hinton.
For Keeley O’Hagan the dark days – the depression, the disorders, the flat-out disarray – are finally a part of her past she can talk about. In fact New Zealand’s top female high jumper, and Commonwealth Games hopeful, is opening the book on a raw chapter of her life in the hope of steering others away from a pathway that almost consumed her.
O’Hagan is in a good spot. Now. With Life. With her health. With her mental wellbeing. She looks in the mirror and sees a person who is confident, content and comfortable in her skin. There was a time, not so long ago, when she couldn’t come to terms with what she saw in that looking glass.
The 28-year-old Christchurchbased, Kapiti Coast-raised athlete is positively soaring, having recently made the highest clearance of her life (1.88 metres – just 4cm shy of a national senior record that has stood since 1991) while bagging a third senior national title. She tucked away an unbeaten domestic season in 2022, and in the process ticked off a mark that might just get her to the Games in Birmingham later this year.
But for the best part of a decade O’Hagan combined a promising athletics career with a battle of another sort – against demons that plagued her, and darkness that threatened to envelope her, manifesting in an attempt on her own life at the age of 17, and an eating disorder she kept secret for years.
‘‘I’m so proud of myself,’’ she tells me during an hourlong chat on the morning of her final meet of the year in Auckland. Most top sports people have blinkers affixed, walls up on ‘‘game day’’. Here is O’Hagan baring her soul – just hours from completing her ninth consecutive victory for 2022. ‘‘I never would have genuinely believed I would be a strong, powerful person. I guess that’s who I see in the mirror when I look now: I see someone who is content and strong.’’
It was not always this way. O’Hagan greets you with a smile and an air of confidence when we meet in the suburban Auckland cafe. She has a story to tell, and a purpose for doing so, and it is not long before we are delving into territory that is raw, unfiltered and dripping with emotion.
You look at her now and it is hard to comprehend such a troubled past.
She oozes selfassurance and serenity. She is engaging and vivacious, and in the shape of her life, as evidenced by that leap of 1.88m at March’s national championships in Hastings.
‘‘There was a lot of relief initially,’’ she says of a PB that had been a long, long time coming. She had jumped a then junior record 1.82m as a 15-year-old and was clearing 1.85m by 2015. ‘‘Happy, but not fully satisfied,’’ she continues. ‘‘I know it’s only the start of what’s to come over the next couple of years. It was nice to tick that box . . . a PB, a Commonwealth Games standard – my first ever senior standard. It’s definitely solidified that self-belief which was really cool.’’
O’Hagan is in her late-20s, but proclaims with a smile, ‘‘I feel 18’’. It is fair to say her teenage years were not the easiest, on the back of her emergence as a prodigious talent out of Otaki (she started athletics at 9, high jumping a year later). She attended the Pacific School Games aged 11 and 14, was battling the Aussies from 15 and represented New Zealand at age-grade world championship level at 16 and 17.
But she lost her way in her teenage years. Badly. It started with injuries and compounded with personal issues. ‘‘I fell into a strong depression. I didn’t want to live in Otaki, so I moved to Auckland to finish my schooling (between 15 and 17). I wasn’t mentally well, and didn’t seek appropriate support,’’ she says. ‘‘People knew I wasn’t OK . . . but it’s hard to rationalise when you’re in this fight or flight mode. I was trying to do sport at the same time, and felt a lot of pressure. It’s a young age to excel at 15. Some people can handle it – I couldn’t.’’
One thing led to another, to another, to another. She caught glandular fever at 16, developed endometriosis, had chronic fatigue issues, strep throat and tonsillitis. She suffered from REDS (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), which is essentially underfuelling your body. At the time she was stumbling her way through a fog.
‘‘I just didn’t know how to nourish my body and mind correctly . . . when I was 17 I developed an eating disorder (something she’s now sure was bulimia, but never had diagnosed), but I had always had disordered eating and an unhealthy relationship with food, and my body. I don’t think that’s uncommon, which is really sad.’’
O’Hagan talks reluctantly about her suicide attempt at 17. But she has accepted it as part of her story, and wants to emphasise the depth of despair that can be reached. ‘‘I had all these health problems, and other things going on around friendships, and as a teenager you feel like there is no way out. I want people to see there is a way out and you can have a happy, fulfilling life.
‘‘I feel sad for that young person, but it’s also encouraging because I don’t think I could get to that stage again. I know what it feels like to be at rock-bottom. I know the signs, the triggers, and if I’m having certain emotions, I’ll be proactive about trying to move through it.’’
Through all this O’Hagan did her best to maintain a high jumping career, but it was not easy. She estimates from 17 through to 21, and again briefly when she relapsed at 24, she was dealing with her eating disorder. Her health in general was poor, as was her mental state. There were days, months, even years when she struggled to get out of bed, let alone tune her body well enough to soar over 1.80 metres.
She has had counselling over the years for her mental condition, but never for her eating disorder. ‘‘I was intentionally restricting food . . . I believe I would have been diagnosed with anorexia, but I never received support, solely because I kept it a secret. I only told my mum last year I had bulimia. I always felt this shame talking about it to my family.’’
Turning the corner has been a long, tough process. It started when she was 19 and confided about her eating disorder to a close male friend. ‘‘He was first person I ever told and he started to make me see I am someone who is worthy of being free from demons or internal conflict. I spent a lot of time with this person, and couldn’t run off to the bathroom, couldn’t do some of the behaviours I had previously got away with.’’
‘I want people to see there is a way out and you can have a happy, fulfilling life . . . I know what it feels like to be at rockbottom. I know the signs, the triggers, and if I’m having certain emotions, I’ll be proactive about trying to move through it.’ KEELEY O’HAGAN
Life went on. O’Hagan ticked off a degree in criminology and anthropology in Wellington, while also training under Mike Ritchie who became one of her most important confidants. She’s also just finished a Bachelor of Applied Science in human nutrition, and now works part-time in the field which is interesting considering her background.
But it’s only been the last three years or so she’s figured things out enough to get her high jumping back on track. ‘‘A lot of it has come from feeling comfortable with who I am as person,’’ she reflects ‘‘I know I’m a good person who has a kind heart, and if I’m this person I know I’m capable of achieving anything I want, and I am allowed to have a happy, healthy life.’’
A big part of this process revolved around her decision to move in 2019 to Christchurch to train under coaching guru Terry Lomax. She had been doing ‘‘OK’’ in Wellington, with Ritchie, and had begun to ramp up her jumping over the 2017-18 season while still dealing with ongoing health issues. But Lomax had broached the idea of a move during the season and while on a backpacking holiday in South
East Asia in 2018 she had what might be called an epiphany.
‘‘It was early morning on a long bus ride between Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh, and I was sitting there looking out on the fields, and thought, ‘I’m going do it, I’m going to move to Christchurch. It just feels right’. Terry had said a couple of months before the answer will come and you’ll figure it out. I didn’t expect it to come like that.’’
She has not looked back, even if the journey to this summer has had its up and downs. She jumped 1.84m in 2019 and 1.85m in 2020 which hinted at what was coming. But the summer of ’20-21 proved frustrating after technical runup changes. ‘‘It was a mental battle with myself to get out of my comfort zone, and I just wasn’t in a position to push through.’’
They persevered, and eventually prevailed, culminating in that 1.88m PB in Hastings that affirmed the wisdom of the decision made on the road to Cambodia.
O’Hagan has known Lomax since she was 15 and credits his support, knowledge and belief in her as an athlete and person as intrinsic to everything she is achieving now.
‘‘I’ve been doing training that has challenged me physically and mentally in so many positive ways. But it’s gone beyond just being a coach for me,’’ she says. ‘‘One time I had stuff going on, texted him and said, ‘Terry, I’ve been sitting outside the track for half an hour and can’t bring myself to come in because I can’t stop crying’. He told me to come back when everyone had gone and we’d do a session with just us. That’s him understanding there are other things going on.’’
It goes beyond even that. Lomax and O’Hagan, in line with modern thinking, have developed her training programme around her menstrual cycle, which she says shows the quality of an older coach prepared to ‘‘open up his mind a little bit’’.
It all has O’Hagan in ‘‘a really good place’’ as she contemplates an exciting year or two ahead. ‘‘I still have my moments, but I’m able to rationalise my thoughts more, and I understand that internal monologue that can be so negative is not necessarily reality. Sometimes I challenge that now, and sometimes I can’t, I have my cry, do nothing for a day, and work through it.’’
And her message to anyone reading this and perhaps identifying with some of it?
‘‘Talk about it. Open up to at least one person, because it’s not something you want to go through by yourself. People love you and care about you and want you to lead a healthy life. Lean on your people, and if you can’t lean on
someone you’re close with, there are a lot of support services available.
‘‘For young athletes I’d say focus on your strengths because we’re all so different. Every person has a different body shape, or body type, and you need to focus on and nurture what you have.
‘‘It’s not going to be perfect all the time, there will be injuries and things that go wrong. But it can get better.’’
O’Hagan also has some important thoughts around identity that cut to the crux of what has often made things so tough for her.
‘‘When I was younger my identity was intertwined with my sport, and that’s the biggest thing I’ve changed the last couple of years. I no longer see myself as Keeley the athlete. I am Keeley a person who does athletics. When I was younger my whole world felt like it was based on my success as an athlete.
‘‘If you’ve got this idea you can’t be separate from being an athlete, you’ll have an identity crisis at some stage because we can’t continue with sport forever. It’s important people understand success or otherwise in one area doesn’t change who you are as a person.’’
And now? O’Hagan has 1.90m in her sights, then that national record (hint: it’s the wallpaper on her phone). She hopes to make it to Birmingham, but right now is content to reflect on her success.
‘‘I’m never going to be a world record-holder, and I’m most likely not going to get on to the podium at a global event. I’m not going to be Hamish Kerr,’’ she says of her Christchurch squadmate.
‘‘I am an older athlete, and I want to be successful, and happy with my success, and don’t want that to be based on whether I make a team or not because that is outside of my control.’’
Out of the darkness and into the light. Keeley O’Hagan really is in a good place.