When it comes to Hollywood, getting the ending right is the name of the game. The hero is supposed to win, their goals are achieved, their antagonists are defeated and the positive triumphs over the negative. Over in the often cut-throat world of elite sport, nailing the perfect end to an athlete’s script is easier said than done. As a previous Olympic medallist and world champion, Vicky Holland was well-placed to take on the challenge. Yet she was not even sure she would attempt it.
“In early 2022 I was pretty certain I was retiring,” said Holland. “I didn't really think that there was any chance I was going to come back and then I felt pregnant. Quite soon after that I started thinking, well, I actually maybe would like to come back and there were a few reasons for that along the lines of wanting to write my own ending in a way that I was happy with and showing that I could come back to others.”
Holland pointed to the recent examples of Katie Zaferes, Gwen Jorgensen, Alice Betto, Vicky Van Der Merwe and Jess Learmonth as part of the growing cohort of elite triathletes that have taken maternity breaks and returned to the upper echelons of the sport. During her pregnancy, though, Olympic champion Nicola Spirig stood as more of an exception than a rule of postpartum returns.
“I just wanted to be able to give it one last shot and see if I could actually get some results that kind of indicated that I was back to a really good level again. Then I could bow out feeling happy and in love with the sport because if I'd ended at the end of 2021, I don't think that would have been the case. So my outlet was very much, ‘I'm lucky I get to do this one last time I'm lucky I have the support in place that I can do it and I want to do it on my terms’.”
Her racing comeback began in earnest in October 2023 after having her daughter at the beginning of the year. It was then midway through this season that a key moment arrived as Holland won what she called the first true World Cup medal of her comeback in Tiszaujvaros; she had medalled in Vina del Mar at the end of 2023 after multiple athletes ahead of her were disqualified for taking a wrong line in the run.
“Tiszy was important for a few reasons. I knew that I was going to retire this year and I wanted to retire at the WTCS Final. That had been my aim all year long. I wanted to get there and trying to get into the Final was the biggest challenge, especially being from a country where we have a lot of girls who have a good standard and the quota situation means that we always struggle to get all the girls on the start line and we want to. So getting both points at Tiszy and also the podium put me in a really strong position within British Triathlon.”
“It actually kind of didn't fit from a training point of view. I had just gone up to altitude a couple of weeks before but I sort of felt like I didn't really have a choice but to go and try and get a result at Tiszy. I actually was probably way better in Tiszy than I felt I had been showing in training in the few weeks before whereas earlier on in the season I felt like I was going really well in training and maybe hadn't raced as well so it was really nice sort of on a confidence level to show that I could still put out results.”
Thinking back to the first half of the season, prior to Tiszaujvaros, Holland acknowledged there were moments of doubt and uncertainty. “The season was a real mix.”
Following her limited racing at the end of 2023, she took a minimal off-season “because I knew I had no time to waste if I wanted to get into the races that I did want to get into.”
“So then I hit the beginning of the 2024 season. I went out to Hong Kong and I felt like I was in really good shape for that race and basically I just didn't swim very well. That was a real disappointment because the rest of my race I actually think I delivered really, really well. I just was too far down to impact on the race and unfortunately it got sick off the back of Hong Kong, which derailed me for another month or so after that, so had a bit of a disappointment in the first few races that I'd hoped that might roll together and get me in a in a really strong position for the middle of the season, it just didn't happen.'
“And so from that point on, I was sort of scrambling at least until Tiszy for points and making last minute decisions to shoot off the races that maybe I shouldn't have done but I felt like I didn't have a huge amount of choice in it.”
Although she noted her running was probably at its best between March and May, it was after Tiszaujvaros that her race as a whole seemed to click together. Thus started a golden autumn in which she became European champion and, having originally simply hoped to make the WTCS Final start line, finished 4th in Torremolinos.
By her own admission, her hopes of a last-minute surge into Olympic qualification were faint, particularly given the strength of the British women’s team. “My next big aim was to go to the European Championships and I wanted to try and get a podium there. That would have been a brilliant way to sign off. So going to Europeans and then winning was like, ‘wow, like I've sort of done what I wanted to do’.”
“For the WTCS Final I went into that race still wanting a good result, but knowing that it kind of didn't matter and I joked to people that if it wasn't going very well maybe I would just jog around as my sort of lap of honour. When I found myself actually having a really good race, it obviously became really exciting and motivating to do better and better and better.”
Holland knocked her bike over in T2 and stopped to pick it up out of concern for a penalty. Having arrived with the leaders, she therefore exited transition around 10 seconds behind and spent the run picking off several ahead. On the one hand, it perhaps saved her from the initial hectic first kilometre, allowing her to build into her race. Equally, she pointed out that she never quite got into the sharp end of the action.
“But crossing the line in 4th and knowing that the girls in front of me had finished 1st, 3rd and 4th at the Olympic Games was like, ‘yeah, this is full circle now. I've got back to the top’.”
On Beaugrand, Potter and Lombardi, she added, “between them they are such high calibre athletes and to be close to them, I'm pretty proud of that.”
“The temptation of course is there to carry on but I've made it back now in every sense, not just the performance but I think in my rankings. I didn't want to push my luck and carry on again and then be like, ‘oh, but actually now I'm injured or now my body's not really up to it anymore’. The standard has moved on again. I don't know in my heart of hearts that I believe that I can run as fast as Cassandre. The level that they are taking the sport to now I think is probably a little bit beyond where I can go and I've reinvented myself enough times to know that my body's probably at limit.”
As if to remind herself that the end was nigh, she suffered a niggle in her Achilles barely a week removed from the Final. “I've not been able to run properly and I think those are the sorts of things that when you're 38 and you probably don't recover as well as you used to, especially when you're running around after a toddler. These things creep in and I feel really lucky that I got to the end of the season in one piece, I got the racing done that I wanted to do and I did well. Now I can take the pressure off and I don't have to worry if my body falls apart anymore.”
The racing may be over and the Hollywood ending has been completed, but it seems Vicky Holland and triathlon are not done yet. Indeed, one thing that stands out in conversation with her is her passion for the sport. It seeps through her voice.
“I follow it all!” she insisted. “I love the stats and I know people's results. Jess Learmonth and Georgia Taylor-Brown always joke that if they want to know a result of their own that they can't remember that last me. I enjoy sport in general, but I love this sport and that was one of the big driving factors of trying to finish on such a high as that was still having that love for it without any of that sort of feeling of resentment that I think might have been there if I hadn't done this.”
“I do work in triathlon in other contexts already. I do bits of commentary, although not currently for World Triathlon, maybe one day, who knows? (Editor’s note: does this count as an informal job application?) And I hope that I'll keep doing that. I'll still be around races. I'll still keep following because I love the sport.”
For all the medals and high finishes, perhaps the ability to still say those final four words signifies the greatest victory of Vicky Holland’s season.
