Now that her image adorns the sides of an articulated lorry, there is a possibility that you have been overtaken by Heather Fell recently. Or that you have overtaken her. Rivals of Britain’s modern pentathlete have experienced both feelings in recent years as Fell has struggled to maintain the form that brought her such a joyous and unexpected silver medal at the Beijing Games.
Fell could not quite peg back the German Lena Schöneborn in the run, the last of the five disciplines, that day in 2008, but she did uphold one precious tradition. Since the debut of women’s modern pentathlon in Sydney 11 years ago, Britain has won four medals: gold for Dr Steph Cook (Sydney), silvers for Georgina Harland (Athens) and Fell (Beijing) and a bronze for Kate Allenby (Sydney).
That’s a remarkable record of success for a country with a small base of talent, a reflection of how success can breed success and how, within a close- knit family-oriented sport, skills are passed on. Fell was already a competitive swimmer and, from her pony club days, an accomplished young rider before she was taught to shoot by Allenby’s parents. Cook’s golden moment in Sydney simply lit the fuse.
A controversial change in the format has altered the chances of the last-gasp dash for gold, which has been a British speciality. Instead of a straight 3km run, the final event is now a form of biathlon, running interspersed with laser shooting, a test not just of athleticism but of nerve and control. At a recent World Cup event, Fell went into the combined run and shoot in 30th place and emerged 14th.
“You used to go into the final event knowing exactly what you had to do,” says Fell, who is a strong runner. “Now it can chop and change a lot more. Points count right to the end.”
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When she returned to competition in 2009 after taking a post-Olympic time-out, Fell, like a number of her rivals, wondered what had happened to her sport. “I felt a bit cheated,” she says. “This wasn’t my sport any more, but now I just look at it as a new challenge. You can’t compare it to 2008. It’s totally different.”
You can say much the same of Fell herself. For a start, she is now a full-time athlete, able to concentrate solely on training and competition rather than working behind the bar at her local pub in the West Country, one of a number of part-time jobs that initially paid for her sport.
Equally important has been the mental leap into the realms of professionalism, coping with the daily demands of a sport that requires constant juggling of time and technique. Concentrate too much on the strengths — her running, swimming and riding — and the fencing, a source of frustration since her first lessons at school on a Thursday night, can suffer. Work hard in the fencing salle to improve a weakness, as she has been this past week on a training camp in the French Pyrenees, and you risk sacrificing the strengths. The search for balance — or a 25th hour in the exhausting daily schedule — is never-ending.
The quest clearly appeals to a restless, inquisitive soul such as Fell, but it’s not been a straight road. Several times along the way she has wondered whether it was all worthwhile, whether she should be devoting so much of her life to the selfish and quite possibly unfulfilled pursuit of glory. Two years before Beijing, she had given herself a year to improve. Then she qualified for the Olympics and thought she might as well give that a go. Her medal was as big a surprise to her as it was to most others. But then came another moment of crisis, the prospect of training for a whole four-year Olympic cycle to 2012.
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“I thought, ‘Wow, can I do that? Can I keep sane?’,” the 28-year-old says. “I enjoyed my Olympic success, went on the national lottery [funding scheme], did some fun things and came back into it in 2009, but not too seriously. I got a medal at the European championships and was fourth in the World Cup final and I thought, ‘This is okay’.”
But it wasn’t. A blip at the world championships prompted a year-long slump and a prolonged bout of self-doubt. “I stopped enjoying it,” she says. “I didn’t realise I’d slackened off so much. I was kidding myself a bit.”
The kidding stopped when Fell recognised that if she didn’t pin down one of the two places in the team for London 2012, there would be no Olympics. With the rising star, Freyja Prentice, and Mhairi Spence leading a pack of highly motivated domestic rivals, Fell heads into the heart of the season — the World Cup final at Crystal Palace and Greenwich Park next weekend followed by the European championships in Medway later this month and, in September, the world championships in Moscow — with a sharper focus and a clearer head.
“The squad’s become more serious, the training has become harder and the competition to get into the team is more intense,” she says. “So many people keep asking when I’ll know if I’m going to the Games. It might not be until this time next year. But I tend to rise to the big occasion and I tend to get better as the season goes on, so I’m fairly confident I will qualify. It’s helped me because I can’t look too far ahead.”
Fell is also gaining some celebrity in her native West Country, as a reporter for a local radio station, a columnist for a local newspaper and as part of Team Gregory, a group of five West Country athletes sponsored by a haulage and distribution company.
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She travelled to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games last year not to compete for England but to work for Radio Devon and experience life on the other side of the fence, writing rather than making the headlines.
“Quite weird,” she says. Winning gold in London would be the best way of ensuring celebrity the length and breadth of the motorway network.