On a muggy afternoon in east London, Vicky Holland is watching nine- and 10-year-olds puff their way around a tarmac track in cycling helmets twice as big as their heads. Just five days earlier she was gazing over the Copacabana promenade with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. “Standing on the podium and seeing my national flag get hoisted up,” she says as kids whizz past in the background, “that will be the memory that sticks with me.”
By winning bronze in the women’s triathlon at the Rio Olympics Holland became the first British woman to earn a medal in the event. That she also beat her friend and housemate Non Stanford in a final sprint added an extra layer of spice. The pair embraced the moment they had the energy to stand but the third member of their household, Holland’s trainer and boyfriend, Rhys Davey, had to wait a little longer. “My dad had managed to sneak into some area he wasn’t supposed to and was taking photos, typical Dad. But I couldn’t see Rhys,” she recalls. “It was only after the ceremony that I found him. I had one of those hugs over the hoardings with him. It was pretty special.”
Davey, Stanford and Holland share a house in Leeds, the British capital of triathlon (the Brownlee brothers also live nearby). With evenings spent in the kitchen or in front of “endless episodes of Friends or Don’t Tell the Bride”, it’s certainly not a party house. But if you’re looking for the marginal gains that allowed Holland to go from a 26th‑placed finish in 2012, then domestic bliss is it.
“The real difference was that I was much happier in myself,” Holland says. “I know it sounds unlikely, but I would have been happy whatever the outcome because I knew I’d got to the Games in the best shape I could be. I’m 30 now and I know myself a lot better, but I was also surrounded by great people and in a happy relationship. That really helped me to be able to get things in perspective.”
If any further inspiration were needed, it came from the rest of Team GB, including some survivors from London 2012. “I didn’t fly out to Rio until the middle weekend” she says, “so I spent the first week in Leeds watching everything on television. I just remember watching Adam Peaty’s world record and getting so caught up in the excitement. It all boils down to a little phrase: success breeds success. By the time I was on the plane I was looking at the other passengers thinking: ‘They won a medal, and they won a medal; well, I can win a medal too.’”
Like so many in Team GB, Holland is down to earth, thoughtful and openly enthusiastic about her sport. Raised in the Gloucestershire village of Redmarley D’Abitot, she was swimming regularly from the age of six. By the time she reached secondary school she was “doing a bit of everything. Swimming, running, tennis, the lot.” Her father was a former footballer and rugby player but it was her mother who was the real enthusiast. “She knew something about every sport. She had the knowledge, as we like to say.” She also provided the lifts.
Proficient in pretty much everything she turned her hand to, Holland had a dilemma as she got older: her hero was Kelly Holmes, but her first love was swimming, which sport should she choose? A call from Loughborough University on the day of her A-level results helped make up her mind. “The triathlon team rang me up and asked me to consider joining their team,” she says. “I don’t know how they got my number. I think they were ready to offer me a way into Loughborough even if I hadn’t got the grades. That made my mind up.”
After making the decision it took time for Holland to adapt, not competing properly in the sport for two years and only joining the world-class programme in 2010 at the age of 24. She confesses to still not being as enthusiastic about the cycling as her two childhood specialisms, “but I do like it a lot more now. Mainly because I’m actually good at it.”
Selected for London 2012 as a domestique for Helen Jenkins, it was a bike crash that led to Holland’s disappointing finish. But a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow changed the target once again.
Holland is back at London’s Olympic velodrome, hoping to inspire the next generation of triathletes (she is part of the #YourGOTRI campaign that looks to wean newcomers on to the sport). She hasn’t had time to stop since climbing the podium but she knows that, with her medal dreams fulfilled, she now has another tough choice to make: does she push again for Tokyo?
“On the physical side I am now 30 and things do start to deteriorate, so I’m told,” she says. “So I’ll wait and see on that level. On the mental side of things I still really love what I do but I’d be lying if I said it was all plain sailing. Winter days in the UK are tough! And the more I go on the more I think about a life after triathlon, a potential career after triathlon, a family after triathlon. I have to decide whether I can wait four more years to start doing those things.”
There’s that sense of perspective again. But ultimately you get the feeling it will be the competitor in Holland that makes the decision. “I don’t want to go to Tokyo if I’m not a medal contender”, she says. “What would be the point of going to a third Olympics just to turn up?”
