A few months ago, when Helen Jenkins was reminded by a friend that the Olympics were rapidly approaching, she dizzily replied: “Is it Rio this year? Oh yeah it is. It’s this year.” The former double world triathlon champion could be forgiven for being absent-minded. She has suffered so many setbacks that qualifying for a third Games was not really on her mind. That all changed last weekend with a dominant and wholly unexpected victory over the world’s best in the World Triathlon Series Gold Coast event.
Not only did the result book Jenkins’ place in the British Olympic triathlon squad, which will be named on Monday. It also means that, staggeringly, she will head to Rio as a potential medallist, perhaps even a gold medallist. “I was shocked to win in Australia,” she tells the Observer. “The last five weeks of training before the Gold Coast was the best I’ve had in years but I didn’t expect that.”
She was not alone. Jenkins was the first triathlete to beat the American Gwen Jorgenson, who was on a 13-run winning streak, since 2014. Jorgenson, whose prowess on the 10km run has made her almost unbeatable, finished 41 seconds behind in second.
Meanwhile Jenkins’ friend and British team-mate Jodie Stimpson ended up 12th. It meant that the selectors had an easy decision to make: Jenkins would be joining Non Stanford and Vicky Holland, who had already qualified after finishing second and third in the triathlon World Grand Final last September.
Suddenly the 32-year-old, who grew up in Bridgend, could look forward again after four years of pain and frustration since arriving at the London Olympics as a gold-medal favourite, only to finish fifth. Back then Jenkins was the reigning world champion and loved the Hyde Park course, having won the test event. To use horse racing terminology, she had impeccable course and distance form.
However, unknown to anyone outside her team, she had started to suffer excruciating pain in her knee 10 weeks’ beforehand. “I was having loads of scans and the doctors said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with your knee, just train,’” remembers Jenkins. “I thought: ‘I literally can’t put my foot on the floor’.”
As doctors tried to discover the cause, she struggled with the consequences. Her husband and coach Marc explains: “She couldn’t swim. She couldn’t bike. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t walk. She was in that much pain. For three weeks she couldn’t train, and even then she struggled. The day before the Olympics she only ran five minutes, because she couldn’t do any more.”
A combination of willpower and painkillers kept Jenkins in the leading pack through the 1500m swim, the 40km bike ride and for nine of the 10 kilometres on the run. But, as the five leading athletes crossed the one kilometre to go banner, her four medal rivals and her hopes slipped away. Still, in hindsight, she is not disappointed with her result. “I just didn’t have the fitness,” says Jenkins. “It took me a while to get over but I look at it now and I’m quite proud because it was pure willpower to get through. It was horrific. I couldn’t walk properly for days because I was so sore.”
It was only in 2014 that doctors discovered that Jenkins’ knee was not the problem but her back. She was suffering from scoliosis and spondylolisthesis. Injecting cortisone and local anaesthetic into a nerve root allowed her to train again without pain. However, other injuries, including a serious foot problem, flared up which forced her to miss the 2014 Commonwealth Games and left her struggling for fitness and motivation last year.
“It was the first year when I was entering races thinking: ‘I don’t know if I want to do this,’” she admits. “And that’s such a dangerous attitude. When you are in the swim and you get bashed about a bit or find yourself in a bad position, if you are driven you just find a way through. But if you have doubts, you have no chance.”
In the Rio test event last August Jenkins got clipped around the head in the swim, became disoriented and did not finish. She thought then that her Olympic hopes were over. To make a bad year worse her husband suffered a re-emergence of life-threatening pulmonary embolisms. “He’s on blood thinning medication, so he’s so much safer now,” says Jenkins. “That’s taken a huge weight off my mind.”
Finally her injuries also started to clear up. Jenkins was able to train, almost without interruption, from October through the winter. Her confidence grew. Perhaps, she thought, she actually could mount a challenge for an Olympic place on the Gold Coast.
Her team left nothing to chance. One of Sport Wales’ sports scientists worked out the distance to each bend on the cycling course and then gave Jenkins sessions to simulate sprinting to a dead turn, riding steady and then sprinting again. The strategy worked to perfection as she joined a breakaway group on the bike, which established a 90-second lead over the pack, before powering to victory on the run.
When Jenkins crossed the line she started blinking rapidly, as if trying to convince herself that it was not a dream before breaking into an enormous smile. It had been a long time coming. “It has been four years since London and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to compete on that level again,” she admits.
So when she steps on to the start line in August, will she be seeking redemption for 2012?“ I would have thought that a couple of years ago,” she says. “But now I’m just going to try my best.” And that, as her opponents have rediscovered, is something still to be reckoned with.
