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Setting and still holding the British records in the 800m and 1000m, Dame Kelly Holmes MBE is an Double Olympic and Commonwealth Champion, and multiple medalist across European and World championships. This includes her double win in the 800m and 1500m at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, becoming the first Briton in over 80 years to do so.
After her Olympic success, Kelly Holmes won BBC Sports Personality of the Year, European and World Athlete of the Year and was honoured with a Damehood from the Queen.
Raised by her mum on a council estate in Kent, she pursued her talent at running from age 12, later becoming a mini youth Olympic Champion age 17.
However, at a month before Kelly was 18, she left professional sport to pursue her other dream: to be in the British army. She became an HGV driver and then a Physical Training Instructor, before being awarded an MBE for services to the British Army in 1998.
Her athletic career was overshadowed with repeated injury and disappointment. Recurring physical injuries contributed to periods of clinical depression and self-harm that continued to affect her even just one year before her Olympic double win.
Dedicating her career after professional sport to guiding disadvantaged young people, by getting their lives back on track by using world class athletes to engage, enable and empower, Kelly Holmes is now a global inspirational speaker, an Honorary Colonel with the Royal Armoured Corps Training Regiment and encourages the same philosophy that she lives by, nothing is impossible.
