Commonwealth Games: Progressive Eilidh Child ready for return to school

Published on Saturday 16 October 2010 14:43

AFTER winning a silver medal in the 400 metres hurdles at the Commonwealth Games, Eilidh Child will shortly revert to her No 1 event: the balancing act.

Now 23, Child has made it this far in track and field while holding on to her day job as a PE teacher at Perth Grammar School, and will resume her duties there next week after the mid-term holiday. So far it has worked well, with teaching providing a contrast with training, and her employers allowing her to have a degree of flexibility so she can fit in her training schedule. But if she wants to maintain her progress - and she certainly does - Child will soon have to commit to becoming a full-time athlete. The question is not if she does so, but when.

"This year I'm going to carry on with teaching part-time because my school have been really helpful," she explained. "Maybe 2011, 2012, because I really want to have a shot at doing well at the Olympics, maybe that's when I'll go full-time.

"My school have approached me and said if I need to go full-time for a year or two years my contract is permanent so they can cover my absence by getting somebody to come in on a fixed contract for a year or two years. The school have done so much to try and make it as easy for me as possible.

"I probably could have gone full-time this year, but I quite like having the job there at the moment. It's quite a nice little focus for me and I work better with a routine.

"It splits my week up - rather than having every single day training in the morning and then having the rest of the day free, it's quite nice to split it up and have to train different times when I'm working. So for me, that was a better option that way rather than money-wise."

That silver medal in Delhi was the high point of a season in which Child came of age as an international athlete. But, while she has made notable progress this year, also reaching the final in the European Championships, her rivals have not exactly been standing still.

Great Britain team-mate Perri Shakes-Drayton, for one, is ranked ahead of her. An absentee from Delhi, the Londoner took bronze in the Barcelona final, while Child finished eighth.

It is not so much more hard work that will help Child keep getting faster, it is what she does either side of that hard work.

"It's not so much fitting in the training: the main thing for me to make it work better is the recovery," Child explained.

"On a Thursday I'll train in the morning and go to work in the afternoon, then I've got the evening free. If it was a hard session it would be much easier for me to train in the morning and then chill out for the rest of the afternoon and maybe go for a nap.

"If I'm starting to up my training I'll need more recovery and more relaxation time.I only train once a day, it's just everything that goes after that - all the extra things like going for a massage and eating at the right time.

"I'm quite young for my event - not for athletics, but for the hurdles. You work to get quite a few winters behind you, and get more experience, learn the stride patterns and so on. I'm obviously not quite there yet, so a few more years…"

And so she should be at her peak. If not at the London Olympics of 2012, at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games two years later.

"The Olympics is such a huge thing and there's so much depth in the 400m hurdles just now. I'd really like to make an Olympic final.

"I'm hoping 2012 will not come too early for me. Making that final would be a huge thing for me, and I'm hoping 2014 will be right on the target."

The most encouraging aspect of the Delhi final was that four or five of the field had a chance of the medal, and that it all came down to who was able to hold their nerve. Child did that all right, blasting off the last hurdle to claim second with a strong, self-confident closing burst of speed. "The good thing about it was that I managed to cope with the pressure," she said. "I was so nervous the night before the final, just because I knew I could get a medal.

"I'm nervous, but I can control these nerves. The final was the biggest race of my life, because I've run major championships but I've always kind of been one filling the lanes in the final. So this showed me I can cope with the pressure and perform well."