Mum and Dad are the real Olympic winners
Resilience. Endurance. Everywhere you look in the GB Olympic team you will witness just what it takes to perform at the highest level.
But I’m not talking about the participants; I’m taking my hat off to the real heroes. It’s the parents who deserve the medals.
The kids just have to run, swim or cycle really fast. In my book, the credit should go to the mothers who put their careers on hold and the fathers who rise before dawn to drive their offspring to training or tournaments; not just once every four years but every day, every weekend, of every year.
Lauren Williams, the 22-year-old who just took silver in taekwondo, was just 14 when she was first selected.
It was a huge endorsement of her talent – but as she wasn’t old enough to enter the athletes’ accommodation at the team’s base in Manchester, her mother Tanya quit her job, and the two of them lived in a caravan near the site while dad and sibling stayed at home in Wales, in a stressful arrangement that lasted for 18 months.
“She had been kickboxing since the age of four, and who can deny a child their dream?” Tanya asks. Me, I could. Barely an opening ceremony goes by without me feeling relief at my two daughters’ sporting mediocrity. It’s why I never took them ice skating or to pony club.
Meanwhile BMX rider Kai Whyte, 21, recalls being taken to competitions and everyone having to sleep in the car overnight to save money. Um, no thanks.
Kay Adlington, mother of double Olympic gold swimmer Becky, recounts “4am alarms and acting as a round-the-clock taxi service in a chlorine-filled blur” for years. Shelling out £200 on racing costumes that might last for three competitions at most also had a major impact on the bank of mum and dad, not to mention the cost of the mega-nutrition athletes must consume.
But it’s the logistics that are really crippling. Northern Irish schoolboy gymnasts Finlay Hazelton and his brother Toby are members of different squads at different levels who train at different times. They moved with their dad to Manchester while their mother commuted back to the province for work. Then, in order to keep juggling, dad bought a camper van so he could drop the boys off and work remotely from the car park until it was pick up time.
Much like the stars of field and track, I believe Olympic parents are born, not made, and I hail their greatness.