The former 400m Olympic, World and Commonwealth Champion reflects on her athletics career in conversation with the founder of female sports platform, Slowe Club
photography Derrick Kakembo
creative direction Chinasa Chukwu
styling Isabelle Landicho
styling assistant Moeysha Barco
hair & makeup Karla Leon
words Ro Jackson
Having founded a platform for the stories of women in sport in 2017, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that I spend a lot of my time talking to and interviewing athletes. However, it’s not that often I have the opportunity to talk to a woman whose career has been quite so long and decorated as Christine Ohuruogu’s. As a former 400m Olympic, World and Commonwealth champion, and a record holder alongside Merlene Ottey and Usain Bolt for medalling in the most successive global championships, Ohuruogu’s career has seen many a medal. But when you compete at the top level for so long, there’s bound to be some less-than-rosy moments. Whilst I’m always keen to hear about the highs, it was humbling and fascinating to hear Ohuruogu reflect on the more difficult parts of her career too now that she’s retired, and find out what she’ll be going on to succeed in next.
Ro: Tell me about when you were growing up – did you always see yourself in sport? Was it quite easy for you to see that you could have a career in athletics?
Christine: Not really. I grew up primarily with an older brother and a younger brother and we didn’t really watch much TV, we spent all our time playing outside. We were very active children, but for me that never really translated to organised sport as such.
When did that shift happen for you, between being active and competing? Do you remember when someone first noticed you were good at running?
It wasn’t until a lot later, like 16 or 17. I played netball for a club and for my school, for the county and then I played for England under 17 and under 19. I didn’t start track until a teacher watched me running at a sports day race and said that I looked like I’d been coached. After that, it gave me an idea and I started thinking in the same way that I got coached for netball I could possibly get coached to run, not just to run fast but because it could make me a better netball player.
How did you choose between the sport you already loved and the one you would come to love?
My running coach persuaded me. I was playing netball nearly every day of the week and then trying to squeeze track on top of that. One England Netball camp wanted me to go away over a weekend, which would have meant taking me away from track and my coach was like, ‘I can’t keep losing you every weekend to play netball. You have to decide because I think you can be a good athlete’, and you come to the point where you just haven’t got enough hours in the day.
It was really hard because netball was a world that I felt entirely comfortable in. I’d played since I was eight or nine. Track was a completely unknown world. To this day, I think it’s one of the hardest phone calls I had to make to the England Netball head of performance to say that I was quitting.
Early on in your career you were given a year-long ban for missing three out-of-competition drug tests. How did you manage to deal with obstacles like that, especially when they may have felt harsh?
I think that was particularly tough because I was very young, I was 22. It wasn’t so much for myself but I felt for my coach and family because it’s like you drag everybody down with you. So for that reason it felt unfair, and because I felt it wasn’t really the big issue that they were making it out to be, or I didn’t think it was at the time. Obviously now I understand it better and rules are rules, I broke the rules and I get it, but I was always in the mind of if I did nothing wrong and if I could explain where I was... I think the rules didn’t account for genuine forgetfulness, it’s human. I was living in a house with seven other people so it was very chaotic which meant, as a result, my life was chaotic. The funny thing is when I look back now, I don’t even know how I did [deal with it] because if it happened to me now I’d be wiped out!
There are always obstacles. If you go to a Championship and you don’t run as well as you’re supposed to run or you get injured or get sick, these are obstacles because you’re saying I’ve screwed up and I’m not going to get compensated for anything here because I haven’t achieved anything. It’s a championship and you have to perform. I think some people will say as long as you did your best, but it is performance-based, you can’t run away from that. They are looking to see if you performed or not and that’s the bottom line, unfortunately. And that’s in any sport, you’re expected to go away and train, and then you’re expected to perform and that’s a huge pressure.
Were you watching the World Championships in Doha this year? Is it difficult to not be competing at that level now?
I actually was in Cuba watching it which was fun. I really enjoyed watching it and it’s probably the first time I’ve sat and just binge-watched track because normally I’m always competing. I think if you watch it like a spectator you maybe don’t appreciate a lot of things, so I have to remind myself I know what it’s like and to not be too hard on them.
“I haven’t had any time off since I was a kid. For as long as I’ve known I’ve always been doing sport, every day has been punctuated by thoughts of track”
People were complaining about the crowd turnout but as an athlete when you’re there you don’t care. It’s nice if people are cheering for you but you have a job, and if it’s bothering you that much you really aren’t focused on what you’re supposed to be doing. You have to just do your job the best you can without worrying about things you can’t change if you want that medal.
Do you think that you have faced any more pressure than other athletes as a black athlete, or as a female athlete? Is that something that you have had to think about or battle with over your career?
I’d say no because if I look at how I started in the sport - when I first started track, the group was completely mixed, my coach is a man and I’ve worked with him the entire time. Somewhere along the line a female coach joined and I watched my coach be very respectful of her, helping her along, she was part of the group and he always allowed her space and room to grow and develop.
So that’s what I saw growing up and the group itself was very mixed in terms of cultures. That’s the great thing about track, like you can say, I want to go training in Timbuktu, is there a group there? And there is, and you ask the coach ‘can I join you for a couple of weeks?’ That’s the beauty of our sport. Wherever you are, you just pick a group, pick a coach and off you go.
Over your career, did it become increasingly difficult to balance expectations of you as an athlete, and as a woman, and as a friend?
I started realizing that as I got older and towards retiring I started looking at my life thinking, I’ve sacrificed so much for this sport. When you’re working towards something it’s okay, but then after you miss a lot of time with your friends, a lot of births, marriages, and you’re travelling around alone for a lot of the time because your timetable is just completely out of sync with everybody else. I’m from a big family, everyone is growing up and they’re all at home having fun and you’re off training in Florida, and after a while you begin to think, is it worth the effort? I made Rio 2016 which was my fourth games and I thought I’ve made another Olympics, but the burden is getting a bit too heavy now, there’s always going to be another games and I don’t want to get to the point where you’re never happy, always chasing.
And how did you come to that decision to retire, was it something you considered for a long time?
I wanted to get to 2017 because that was in London, but it didn’t work, I didn’t make it – I was injured, I was tired, I was just burnt out. It’s hard to describe what a burnout is. I just know that I’d had enough. I didn’t hate the sport, but I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. In the lead-up to London, I met someone who was encouraging me to take the legal route post-career and the more he talked about it the more I felt, of all the things I’ve experienced that was the one thing I thought I might want to do. So once I got that in my mind and started studying law, and even though 2017 had come and gone, I was quite happy to jump back on the track too because I had something to alleviate the boredom. I need to be mentally stimulated and track wasn’t doing that for me anymore because I was so well-versed in how to prepare, it just wasn’t fun. Doing both went well for a bit, but unfortunately again with best made plans... the thing is, I only have one tool in the toolbox, and that’s a hammer – I just go too hard on everything. So I went too hard on the degree, I went too hard on the track, I have no off button and it came to a point where it was constant work. So I got injured which was probably a blessing in disguise.
Typically with injury in track there’s a great system, you’ll be scanned, you’ll have a diagnosis, you have a rehab program, you’ll start the next day. But when I got injured while I was studying I didn’t have time to go and get a scan, I didn’t have time to see a physio, I didn’t have time for anything. So the injury lingered on, and in the end, I thought I’m going to have to come to a decision and call it a day, I’m going to have to retire because I’ve started this degree and I love it. I’m actually a nerd at heart, before I was a sports person I was always a proud academic, so it seemed like I was just going back to my natural home. So yeah, it finally hit me that I’d have to retire because I was choosing to prioritise my degree which I’d never done before, I’d never prioritised anything over track.
It’s interesting that you still talk about track like it is your job. Do you think it has been difficult to adjust to retirement?
I’ll always see track as my job. I still go to the track now, but the problem is I talk a lot and when I go I distract them so I’ve had to stop. I remind myself of David Brent in The Office when he gets fired and he keeps coming back to work, and the next time he brings his dog in, and everyone’s working and he’s there just being a nuisance, that’s what I feel like sometimes. But it will always be my home, I’ll always be an athlete.
Somebody asked me recently if they gave me like one million pounds would I go back and train for Tokyo next year, I was thinking if you can give me one million pounds and I could train two days a week sure. But really I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t put myself through that because I know what it takes to get there. I’m not prepared to put my body or my mind through that.
So what’s next for you beyond sport? What else are you focussing on and excited about?
I’ve just graduated in the summer – it was so hard, the hardest two years of my life. It was a three-year degree compressed. So now there’s more studying, and I’m heading down the bar direction. I am scared because it’s just a very different world and I’ll be asking skills of myself that are a bit unpolished. So that’s three more years but I’ve given myself a year off. I’m going to start work experience next week and then I’m just going to travel because I haven’t had any time off since I was a kid. For as long as I’ve known I’ve always been doing sport, every day has been punctuated by thoughts of track, even in the offseason training is never that far away.
So I’ve given myself a year to work it out. I just want to take one step at a time and just allow life to come to me. So right now, I’ll just put one foot in front of the other and wait for things to come.
Interview originally featured in POSTSCRIPT Issue 3.