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In celebration of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The Record, a series dedicated to the women of Team GB, who are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete, from competing on their periods, balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.
In the first instalment of our series, we chat with Kimberley Woods, who just won an Olympic bronze medal for Team GB, about recovering from her disappointing loss at Tokyo 2020, discovering her passion for the sport, her inspiring mental health journey and her hopes for the future of women’s sport.
This article references self-harming.
Three years ago, Kimberley Woods “ugly cried” on TV – at least, that’s how she describes it to me as we chat over Zoom. “I've not managed to fully watch it back yet,” she admits.
She had just raced in the solo kayaking final. It was the biggest moment in her career so far — but after accumulating a series of penalties, she placed last. “I wasn't hugely proud of my final run,” she says carefully. “I was really upset at the end.”
But Woods was determined that her story wouldn't be defined by disappointment – it would be one defined by hope. Then 26, Woods had already made it through a series of setbacks to reach her Olympic debut, and the bitter loss at those Games soon became just another setback to overcome. Since that tearful day, Woods has won bronze at the World Championships, taken silver in the women’s canoe team at the European Games in Poland, and, at last year’s World Championships, she earned a silver medal in the C1 event.
Now, with the Paris Olympics underway, she is ranked number one in the kayak cross-world rankings. “I guess I have proven that I'm still here – I am very strong, and I have my best world ranking ever. I'm world number one! I'm in a really good place.”
Woods’ love affair with canoeing and kayaking, which has seen her through both highs and lows, began when she was just four years old. Born in Rugby, she discovered the sport as a child thanks to her grandparents. “They all do kayaking – my auntie did it on the GB teams and everything,” she says. “I remember going to, like my grandparents house, getting dressed up in all the canoeing gear.”
She recalls being captivated by an old videotape, which showed her aunt winning the silver medal at the Junior World Championships a year before she was born. “It wasn't even the Olympics, it was just the Junior World Championships,” she laughs. “But I loved it… I was just in awe of what the sport was.” Then and there, she became determined to have her own moment on the podium. “I said, ‘I want to do that. I want to go and beat her.’ I was really competitive.”
Her grandparents warned her that she would need to be able to swim 50 metres – so off she went to swimming lessons. Before long, she came back with a swimming badge, and her lessons began.
For the first few years, her grandfather served as her coach. “He was in the swimming pool with me, teaching me how to roll and do the basics.” Eventually, he took her to her first race. “It probably took me a very long time to do the course, but I was really happy that I'd done it. I came back with a little trophy,” she says, adding proudly, ‘I was the only girl competing in that race.”
For the young Woods, the sport soon became an outlet – an escape from what was becoming an increasingly unpleasant experience at school. “I wasn't a huge fan of school,” she says. As she got better and stronger and braver in a kayak, her classmates became more and more cruel. “My physique changed. I started getting stronger, getting muscles in my arms, getting a bit of a six-pack,” she says. “Going through all that as a girl is different – I think it's a bit more accepted nowadays, but it definitely wasn't back then.”
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Hopping into her boat became her “only way to release the energy that I had.” She adds, “I didn't know how to process my emotions. I wasn't very intelligent when it came to that side of things.” For a while, Woods was able to manage her mental health by throwing herself into the sport. But then, in 2015, it all changed. “It worked until the sport was taken away from me.”
While playing American football at university, Woods ruptured her ACL. The injury led to a serious operation and a lengthy recovery. “I didn't know how to deal with it,” she confesses. “I kind of had this persona where I was really strong – I had put up this kind of image where I was never weak.”
With no outlet left, trapped in her student flat, Woods began self-harming. “It kind of became a bit of a routine, so that I could feel something. That was the outlet,” says Woods.
Eventually, her coach noticed what was happening and approached her. “Thankfully, he did,” she says. “He was the best person to do it.” She began the long road to recovery, seeing therapists, psychologists and doing two stints at the Priory, a mental health treatment centre. “I’m very thankful that all of that has made me who I am today. And thankfully, I'm not self-harming anymore.”
One of the biggest revelations from that period was that being on the contraceptive pill was actually impacting her emotionally and mentally. “Things changed a lot when I came off it,” she says, “and I never really kind of put those two together until then – I think coming off it is the best decision I've made, because I know that my body is actually going through the whole process of, I guess, being a woman.”
A true sporting icon.
As her sporting career continues, Woods seems determined to bring some of her positivity and hope to other young women watching at home. One of her greatest wishes as she gears up for Paris is to challenge the stigma that still surrounds women’s sports in the UK.
It's not the relative lack of opportunities for women to get involved; it's the way we still so often think of quote-unquote “female athletes” as if they were lesser than their male counterparts. “We're fortunate to have a sport where we're gender equal in the Olympics,” she says, referring to The International Canoeing Federation (ICF)’s announcement in March that there would be an equal number of males and females in the sport at the Games this year. But in other sports, there is “still a long way to go.”
Woods’ first Olympics experience wasn’t quite what she had hoped it would be – the pandemic led to a delayed, pared-down Games, and Woods found herself competing in front of empty stands. “I'm someone that thrives off teamship and the environment,” she explains. “So when there was no crowd and not many people there, I think it was really hard for me to kind of psych myself up for it.” Then came her disappointing loss – “but I think the message I put out afterwards was really important to me, to show everyone at home that I was okay and I was dealing with it in the right way,” she says, once again painting her story in a positive, hopeful light.
“One of my favourite photos from the whole Games was actually being at the bottom of my final run crying with my training group with me. I think it meant a lot to know that they were there regardless of whether I won or lost.”
It was a defining moment that might have become another low point for her mental health. Instead, she has used it as a jumping-off point – a launchpad for everything that will come next. “I'm really proud of the woman I've become, especially in the last three years since, since Tokyo,” she says. “I've learned a lot from that and from who I was then. And I know that I can go to Paris and make the most out of everything that's going to be in front of me.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with self-harm, you can access support at Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or texting 86463 (9 am to 6 pm on weekdays).
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