Four-time Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington talks training, motherhood and much more

COVER STAR

Spending time with Chrissie Wellington, you could be forgiven for forgetting you’re in the presence of sporting greatness. She’s just so… well, normal. Actually, this is doing her a disservice. She is engaging, open, determined, driven, positive and passionate – all the qualities you might expect from the four-time winner of the World Ironman Championships (widely considered the toughest oneday endurance event in sport, comprising as it does a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run). But she is also modest, spending the majority of our interview regaling me with colourful details of her life, rather than reeling off a list of (frankly amazing) achievements. What’s more, look beyond the world-record sporting ability and, these days at least, she is a woman juggling work, motherhood and an active lifestyle, something so many of us can relate to.

BACK TO THE START

Sport has not always been Chrissie’s top priority. Rewind to her early years and, while she was an active child, sport wasn’t her focus.

“I did sport because I enjoyed it – I had no aspirations of being great at it,” she recalls. “I just had fun. While I’m driven, determined and incredibly competitive, at the time all of that was channelled into academia.”

Indeed, Chrissie excelled academically, going on to achieve a first-class geography degree at the University of Birmingham, where she was also captain of the University Swimming Team. “Or rather, I drank for the University Swimming Team!” she laughs. “If I trained once or twice a week, it was a miracle!”

After graduating, and drawn in by the cache of pursuing a credible career, she opted to study law. But following work placements in London and the offer of a training contract, she deferred her conversion course in favour of travelling – a decision that changed the course of her life.