After achieving Olympic redemption in Paris, the British 400m hurdler has wasted little time in leaving athletics behind to make the full-time switch to teaching
As the winter gloom deepens, Jessie Knight’s running commitments have taken on a rather different complexion to recent years. “I have to race the children in the playground a lot,” she says. “And I can’t let them win!”
With minimal fanfare – so busy has her new life been that she is yet to formally announce the career change on social media – Knight retired as a professional athlete immediately after the Paris Olympics. A few weeks later, she began working as a full-time primary school teacher. And, just like that, one life replaced another.
As someone whose elite athletics career lasted just four-and-a-half years, common sporting convention suggests Knight would only just be getting started on the track. But, aware that she was turning 30 this summer, she explains that retirement had started to cross her radar some time ago.
“I was umming and ahhing about retiring because it felt like the right time at the end of an Olympic cycle,” she says. “There was a teaching job up for grabs so I thought I would do the interview and put it in fate’s hands. When I got it, it all felt quite fitting. It’s very surreal how quickly I have changed.”
The decision to call time so soon into her running career required Knight to offer a rather harsh dose of reality about her future. She had crammed a lot into a short period. There were two Olympic appearances – of wildly contrasting fortunes – two World Championship semi-finals, two European Championships, a home Commonwealth Games and multiple international relay medals indoors and out. She won five British titles over 400m or 400m hurdles. It was all so much more than she had ever expected. But there was a sense of completion and, potentially, reaching her natural limit.
Jessie Knight (Getty)
“I probably could have carried on for a few more years but I knew I didn’t want to do another Olympic cycle,” she says. “I’ve been to everything I wanted to and, if I’m being completely honest, I know my body wouldn’t have maintained itself. I kind of thought: ‘What’s the point?’
“Without me going on and becoming a global medallist, I’ve done it all. I, deep down, know I have tried everything. We have tried different types of training and different stride patterns. So I deep down feel – and this could be wrong – that I could have carried on for another two years and it would have been the same. I could have run 54 seconds for another few years.
“When you’re in the elite athlete bubble you always want more. You can get stuck in wanting more rather than appreciating and recognising what you’ve already achieved. I had started to come away disappointed from a championships where I had only made the semi-final. In hindsight, that’s top 15 in the world, but it wasn’t enough for me any more.
“So I am fulfilled. I think I will appreciate my career and what I did achieve a lot more as time passes. I’m really proud of my career, but I’m ready to walk away.”
This is an abridged version of a feature that appears in the December issue of AW magazine, which is out now here.
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