This is a Global Player Original podcast.

Welcome to Dirty Motherpucker. We're back. I'm your host Anna Whitehouse.

Coming up, we have the absolutely brilliant Kelly Holmes. She's a double Olympic champion and arguably a national athlete treasure.

She's set and holds the British records in the 800 metres and 1,000 meters. Her memoir,

Kelly Holmes, Unique, is out now and it tells the much-loved Olympian's

eventful life story with particular emphasis on her identity as a gay woman. Welcome to Dirty,

Motherpuffalo, Kelly Holmes, Dame. I love, do you have to be careful with that word, don't you?

Yeah. I'm just like, keep my mouth careful with that word, don't you? Yeah.

I'm just like, keep my mouth shut because I just realised what I'm in.

Well, we had Dame Denise Lewis on the podcast.

She was saying, like, basically hitting sort of like around 50,

she was like, I went through every iteration of myself.

You know, I went through the darkest depths when I didn't really know

who I was outside of my sport. That's the thing people don't prepare you for is when the running

has to stop. Yeah. Who are you? Did you find that in a similar way that as you kind of got a bit older,

you grabbed back who you were outside of the athlete. Yeah, I think in sport in terms,

I mean, it's a massive part of your life as a world-class sports person. You do have a little bit

of a different switch on your, different trigger and a different kind of wiring to push yourself

to that infth degree, to never give up, to keep going when everyone writes you off when they've got an injury and you keep going at the top of your game.

It is hard and it's slightly institutionalised like it was in the military because you know what's expected of you, what you have to do every day, what you're scheduling is, your time tabling.

We have to stay in your lane.

In both, though, right?

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