Kelly Holmes may just have made a greater impact OFF the track than she did on it... and what an incredible legacy she created there!

IT is almost 18 years since the most extraordinary athletics week in the life of Kelly Holmes and she is back as front page news.

Yesterday, in an interview with our sister title the Sunday Mirror, Britain’s greatest woman athlete revealed she is gay.

“I needed to do this now, for me. It was my decision. I’m nervous about saying it. I feel like I’m going to explode with excitement,” said Holmes. “Sometimes I cry with relief. The moment this comes out, I’m essentially getting rid of that fear.”

Perhaps in “the moment this comes out” Holmes might just have made an even greater impact OFF the track than she did on it.

And what legacy she has created ON it.

After becoming only the second British athlete – male or female – to win the Olympic 800m and 1500m double at the same Games in the summer of 2004, Holmes was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours.

She was also crowned the BBC Sports Personality of The Year.

By then, she did not even need a surname. If you mentioned the word ‘Kelly’, people knew who you were talking about.

She had shown extraordinary resilience, sporting bravery and sheer bloody-mindedness to achieve her life-long dream of standing on the top of that Olympic podium.

Seven years before her historic middle-distance success, Holmes had hobbled off in tears in that same stadium in Athens as injury ruined her hopes at the World Championships.

But she banished the demons of 1997 in a way she could never have imagined.

On the Monday night of the track and field programme in 2004, Holmes produced the greatest run of her life to win the 800m and produce the image of the Games – her eyes almost popping out as she triumphed (top).

By the Saturday final of the 1500m, she was such an overwhelming favourite that those of us on tight deadlines had written the report before the gun had fired. It was virtually a case of dropping in the time.

By then Britain had fallen in love with Kelly.

Quite right too and local athletics – and I know this because my daughter was among them – reported an increase in women wanting to run middle-distances. A pattern of success grew, with British women consistently making the podium at the major championships.

Last summer in Tokyo, Laura Muir, 29, the European 1500m champion, won Olympic silver as did Keely Hodgkinson, 20, in the 800m.

With the World Championships in Oregon just a few weeks away, Hodgkinson is the fastest woman in the world this year and could take all the beating.

In that week in 2004, Kelly Holmes changed people’s lives and arguably a sporting landscape.

She might just have done the same this week in 2022 – to those in search of a role model of their own.