Welsh middle-distance runner says finishing runner-up to Kelly Holmes in the 2002 Commonwealth Games 1500m in Manchester is her finest moment
For the smaller nations, the Commonwealth Games is a real stepping stone. I always viewed the 1998 Games as being just that for me: a first major outdoor championship and something that would set me up nicely for future events.
But that didn’t happen – I got injured and pulled out – so then you go into the next one thinking: “I didn’t achieve what I set out to achieve there.” It kind of hangs over you a little bit and the Commonwealths only come round once every four years.
But, in 2002, I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t get in the right shape. I just felt a bit like a donkey all year and it was really frustrating. I had no clue why it was happening. I couldn’t hit training properly. I just couldn’t race. All season, I was having to hope it would come together, and then you get deflated when it doesn’t.
Hayley Tullett, Kelly Holmes, Helen Clitheroe (Mark Shearman)
My coach Mark Rowland couldn’t understand it, either. What was it that just wasn’t working for us? Was it a change in the weights [I was lifting in the gym]? Or what we were trying to focus on on the track? We just went back to basics the following year and I ended up getting bronze at the World Championships but, after 2002, 2003 felt like a last chance because I couldn’t keep going through things like this.
I don’t know if there was a pressure I was putting on myself because it was the Commonwealths, and I had missed the Games before, but I went into it not expected to achieve anything. I wasn’t in shape. I didn’t even make it out of the opening round at the European Championships a week later.
At the Commonwealths I was thinking: “I might blow up here because we’ve got the Kenyans, and we’ve got the Brits and the Australians … a lot of good runners.” I really felt I was trying to achieve something against the odds.
The week before, I went to Monaco, came 13th and ran 4:07. I am a person who will always view the glass as half full, but I came back broken after that race. At the end of the day, what could we do, though? I thought: “You’ve got a Commonwealth Games the following week – just get on with it.”
I had nothing to lose. I got through the heats relatively easily and you always know you can’t run the final if you’re not in it. In the final, I came through towards the end but it still surprised me how I came away with silver.
You knew that, if Kelly was even 80 per cent fit, she was going to be on for a medal and was probably going to be champion, whereas I had to be 100 per cent to challenge. That silver was such a big achievement because there was so little expectation. Sometimes, it’s about getting all those little things to go right at the right time, on the right day, in the right place. And I had that.
Maybe it was that racing brain of an athlete, that competitive edge. If you’re running people down, you can sense that maybe you’re going to achieve something. You just keep running to the line. I came past a few others and built on it down the home straight.
It meant so much that we got something out of a bad season. There was a silver lining in there. Or there was a little carrot dangling. I started to think: “If we get a good season going, let’s see what we can get out of that.” It shifted my mentality.
With hindsight, we maybe changed too many things, especially the gym work. I was better off just sticking with the basic stuff that I’d been doing before, and doing that well, as opposed to trying to do new things. At the end of the day, 5000m sessions aren’t going to work for you if you’re aiming for 800m-1500m specific training. It didn’t work. We just went back to basics.
At the European Cross Country Championships in 2002 at the beginning of December, I finished fifth. We’d realised what my strengths were. It showed in how I felt really strong coming into that winter, and it kept coming out to the other side of it, into the track season where I was eventually able to do well at the World Championships and get on to the podium.
As told to Mark Woods
