From gym workout to world champion
Life Changing
BBC
4.6 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anna Bailey had lived a busy life. An IT professional, cat breeder and national cat show judge, she was also prone to bouts of depression. But approaching her 50th birthday, she ruled out self-pity and decided that it was time to get back into shape.
A trip to a local gym seemed unremarkable enough, until she tried out the rowing machine. She was quite good at it - so good in fact, that within a year she would be travelling overseas representing her country in competitive indoor rowing competitions. Within two years she was age-group World Champion. In a story which proves it is never too late to try something new, Anna talks to Dr Sian Williams about the profound moment she realised that she could be a world-beater.
Producer: Tom Alban
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:09.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:12.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:17.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:19.5 | I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, |
| 0:23.6 | we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:28.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:31.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:34.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:35.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:36.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.1 | You're about to listen to the latest series of Life-Changing. |
| 0:43.4 | Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:48.4 | But if you can't wait, you can listen to the latest episodes a whole month earlier than anywhere else. First, on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:57.5 | Hello, I wonder whether you sometimes think, what if? What if I had taken that job, |
| 1:04.3 | done that course, learned a new skill? What if there's something I'm really good at? But because I |
| 1:10.2 | haven't tried, I don't know. |
| 1:12.9 | Sometimes we can tentatively open a door and find something very unexpected on the other side, |
| 1:20.0 | a revelation that leads to pretty awesome change. |
... |
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