Name: Life After the Olympics | The Business of Elite Athletes
Uploaded: 2025-11-02T17:55:12.000Z
Duration: 17 min 33 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

My entire identity was tied to the fact that I was like an Olympic athlete, a runner.

Being in Beijing is a super incredible, life changing experience.

Adverbs of degree

Certainly when you look back on it now and it sort of embeds itself in your brain.

Competing in my first Olympics on home soil and coming away with a medal was just incredible.

I can still remember starting the first game.

We had 20 of my family and friends in the audience and game on.

It can be really difficult once an elite sports person ends their career because that's all they have known and done throughout their entire lives.

Through their childhood they've been working and striving towards one goal and that's to be the best sports person they can.

And then they reach an age and suddenly they can't do it anymore and they need a new career.

And the hardest part about transitioning from a care professional sport to something else is that clarity of identity.

When you retire, that transition is going to be tough no matter what because you've gone from having such a structured lifestyle.

You've had a real purpose, you've had a real goal.

It doesn't matter how successful you are as an athlete or how long or how short your career is once you start, the one guarantee is that at some point it will stop.

I'm actually, what should I say I am when I introduce myself, I'm still, I used to be an Olympic athlete and in some ways that's quite, quite sad.

I never felt like I was naturally talented in my early days.

I was a little bit taller than other kids at my age and had a disproportionately long legs to torso ratio.

But I wasn't like super, super physically talented.

My natural ability was that I could withstand discomfort better than others, I think.

So I found myself for right or wrong running the 400 meters, but

I never thought I'd be a professional runner even as far as like, I remember when I was 16 telling my friends like, oh, I'm not interested in making it a job, it's not really my thing.

I was about to go to university and someone said, hey, would you like to do this race in Italy and they'll pay for your travel?

I thought, oh, that's pretty cool, I'll do That and before long I was 35 and I'd never been to university since.

So, yeah, I didn't fall into it, but I almost like unwittingly followed this path.

I'm Georgie Twig, I am a former GB hockey player and I'm now a lawyer at Bird and Bird in London.

I loved all sports when I was younger and it was only really at secondary school where I started to take hockey seriously.

I think, though, even at that stage, I never really thought that the Olympics was a realistic target.

Always at the back of my mind was quite academic, so I was always still thinking about what I was going to do for my normal career away from hockey.

My parents were quite key in driving that.

Obviously my academic and my future career was important and it was in second year of university, the GB head coach rang me asking to go on trial with the senior squad ahead of London 2012.

And because of the Olympics being in London, they'd just received National Lottery funding, so it'd become a full time programme.

And then as a result of that trial period, I then got offered a full time spot within the training squad.

But obviously it was quite a tricky dilemma I had on my hands.

I didn't want to just throw away my degree or postpone it and not end up finishing it.

And thankfully Bristol University were amazing and allowed me to split my final year over two years.

When sport is at that level, the doors open about potentially something like the Olympic Games.

It's a passion and it's a dream and it's a desire and actually the financial side is not the attraction.

What happens is a lot of sports people, certainly young sports people, and

I hear them talking about the sacrifices they've made.

The truth is they've never lived a different life.

It wasn't really a choice, it wasn't a consideration.

I was defined by how fast I ran on the Track.

you kind of take a lot for granted because this is your plan A and you don't have a plan B and you don't almost appreciate things.

I only really realized I could really feasibly, practically go to a Olympic Games probably a year before Beijing 2008.

After I won the national championship, the British trials in Manchester, and

then I was like, oh, hang on, I'm kind of like one of the best in the country, Surely I'll make it to the Olympic Games.

Everyone always just assumes that winning the gold in Rio was like the absolute pinnacle of my career.

However, for me, London 2012 was equally special.

Nothing can prepare for suddenly competing in your first Olympics on home soil and the feeling that your body goes through it was quite surreal.

When you go into the village and there are thousands and thousands of other athletes and then there's some superstars that you see normally on the TV just in the dining hall with you, it's very hard to get prepared because it is just so unique.

And you don't get that feeling when you then go to your second one actually, because you are used to it.

That first time you go into the Olympic village.

In theory, I should have been at my sort of physical peak in London 2012 when we finished Beijing.

You have this sort of, well, it's four more years and there's this big monster on the horizon of the home Olympic Games.

You like every single interaction with everybody was by the factor.

And in 2011 I got dropped off the funding program.

So like it just ratcheted up the pressure.

I just thought, well, I'm going to press on as normal.

And I had a paid gig that came, which was really useful for me, which was to film this children's, children's television show.

And I had to be this masked runner chasing down these children, right?

But it was filmed in freezing temperatures in Motherwell in Scotland and I was chasing children on the 150meter race all morning, all day.

And of course on the very last rep, at the very last shot, I ruptured my Achilles tendon.

At the start of the year 2012, I was like, oh my gosh, this is like not what you need in Olympic year.

But I needed to do this job because I needed to get paid, right?

So that really probably puts paid to the chances in the end, I did okay.

I was ranked seventh on selection day and they normally take the top six for relet and I was just a little bit outside.

But the truth is I wasn't good enough to make the team.

Injuries can have a huge impact on someone's career.

Obviously if you can't qualify for an event, then you can't compete on the biggest stage and then you can't win the medals that really sportsmen and women's careers hinge on.

A lot of these athletes are walking a tightrope really for, for the weeks and months leading into the Olympics because they need to be in peak physical condition on the one day that their final takes place.

And if that isn't the case, then really everything can unfortunately fall apart.

Making the Olympic Games in 2008 and then missing out on London in 2012 was almost like a death of a close family member.

It was like so traumatic because everybody had said, are you going to be at London to hotel for your entire life?

My entire identity was tied to the fact that I was like an Olympic athlete, runner, and

the one Olympics that everybody ever cared about.

I couldn't really speak to anyone for ages.

I didn't really know how to interact with society because I felt like my entire identity and my entire worth has just been like completely exploded.

My last Olympics in 2016, I think almost everyone at Rudruth had retired by that point.

So I had watched everyone come to the end of their career and moved on.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Life After the Olympics | The Business of Elite Athletes

sort

entire

mental

physical