12 ***^ Sunday 11 August 2019 The Sunday TelegraphSport
J
o Muir knows exactly where she
stands in sport’s nature-versus-
nurture debate. The modern
pentathlete aiming for gold in
today’s Europeans in Bath has got here
via sheer Scottish grit.
“When I started athletics at 12, I
actually wasn’t very good at all,” she
says. Last place in an 800 metres club
race in Carlisle a year later really sticks
in the craw. “I even embarrassed my
mum,” she adds, recalling a humiliating
family trip across the border from
Castle Douglas.
At such an impressionable age, many
would give up. Muir, however, was
spurred on by trailing behind her age
group at Stewartry Athletics Club in
Galloway, explaining that it triggered
her so-called “sadistic” instinct for
self-improvement.
“I would be running, doing the reps,
but not getting any rest at all because I
was slower than anyone else,” she says.
“But I just wouldn’t give up because I
was just so determined to get better.
“After a while it came together and I
loved it. From then on, I remember
committing myself. I just became very
much in to pushing my body to the
limit, just seeing how far I could go
with it. It seems pretty sadistic, but I
used to love the feeling of training
really hard and healing afterwards. ItP
hoebe Schecter is defined
by happy contradictions
and ironies. She is an
American and British
citizen. She says “soccer”
but also has an endearing
twang to her Connecticut accent when
she mentions her northern “gran”. She
stands at a petite 5ft 3in and plays
swashbuckling linebacker for her
American football team. She is a
woman and she has coached in the
NFL. She grew up in the US, but she
did not fall in love with its (unofficial)
national sport until she moved across
the Atlantic.
She is one of just three women ever
to coach in the NFL, but Schecter says
she was much too busy with horses for
the first 23 years of her life to get
caught up in the sport that produces
the world’s most lucrative league.
“Horses is a 24/7 thing. I never had
an interest in football. Equestrian was
what I’d always done, what I thought
I’d spend the rest of my life doing.”
It was only when she moved from
Connecticut to Cheshire to work for a
member of the Dutch Olympic
equestrian team that Schecter’s head
was turned.
“I worked six days a week. On my
one day off I thought it would be good
to meet people. I saw an ad on
Facebook for American football and
took the chance. It was the best
decision I ever made. I had no idea
what I was doing, I had zero body
control. But the girls I met that day
were what brought me into it more –
and that I got to hit people.”
In the past six years she has droppedINTERVIEWEXCLUSIVEkept me going and I improved a lot.”
Within months, she was winning club
races. “When I put my mind to things
I’m very stubborn and I don’t stop until
I’ve got to where I want to be,” she
says. “I had a really good running
coach, Mike, who guided me through
from coming last to winning Scottish
titles. It got me to the standards I am
today.”
Instead of deciding on a full-time
track career, Muir opted for a
discipline where she can juggle her
running ability with her passion for
equestrianism. Her mother was a show
jumper, and Muir was introduced to
pentathlon through her local pony
club. “I was late to starting fencing,”
she says. “That’s my weakest event. It
was definitely the pony club, triathlon
and running that got me involved in
pentathlon.”
Her never-say-die running attitude
in athletics has helped her to lead the
fight to get her marginalised sport
more attention.
Modern pentathlon has featured at
every Olympic Games since 1912.
British women have won five Olympic
medals since 2000, but Rio was the
first time over those 14 years that there
was no British representation on
the podium.
The 24-year-old graduated from
Bath University in 2015 and now trains
there full time at the elite Sports
Training Village, with another Bath
graduate, Kate French. The pair came
away with medals from the recent
World Cup: French winning individual
gold and Muir mixed relay gold; and
both are medal hopes for Tokyo next
year. Muir and French recognise thestakes are high, and it is clear no sport
is completely safe after organisers of
the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth
Games excluded another established
medal, shooting, from the programme.
French, 28, said: “Shooting has been
in for years and years so it’s a shame.
Pentathlon comes under threat most
cycles to be honest because it’s such an
unusual sport. It’s not so popular in
terms of the amount people know
about it, yet it’s one of the coreOlympics sports. I think, for that
reason, authorities must recognise its
importance and keep it going.
“To be able to do all those things
well should be celebrated. The five
Olympic rings represent us.”
French, from Kent, and Muir have
formed a close friendship, and are
backing each other to be among the
medals in Bath today. “It’s just about
having a solid day across the five
disciplines,” says French. “That willpeople come in through only running
backgrounds and then try to pick up
riding. I would be terrified.”
In Britain at least, modern
pentathlon success has been
dominated by women, with GB having
never produced a men’s individual
Olympic medal.
Next year, that is likely to change
through Joe Choong, the reigning
World Cup Final gold medallist, and
Jamie Cooke, the world champion.
French said the friendly gender rivalry
was spurring her on. “In the past it’s
always been the women that have
outdone them, but the men have come
through and are doing pretty
amazingly at the moment,” she said.
“So we need to start pulling some
results out the bag. There is a friendly
rivalry but nothing serious.”
Muir, meanwhile, is hoping her
against-the-odds path into elite sport
will inspire other youngsters to try
modern pentathlon. “It’s really
important we are talking about the
sport,” she says. “Modern pentathlon is
a wonderful combination of things.
“If you are really good at a number
of things but not sure what, pentathlon
gives you so much opportunity.
“It’s so different because you’ve got
that variety. It’s a sport for everyone.”GB modern pentathletes
Jo Muir and Kate Frenchaim to nail Tokyo spot this
week, they tell Tom MorganBriton Phoebe Schecter
tells Molly McElwee whyshe quit equestrianism
for American footballWinning pair plan to put their Olympic sport back on map
Staying focused:
Kate French (left)
and Jo Muir are
both medal
hopefuls for the
European
Championships that
start in Bath today‘Buffalo Bills
players said I
tackled better
than they did’
Defensive lynchpin:
Phoebe Schecter
will captain Britain
at this week’s
European
Championship in
Leeds; (below)
during a successful
coaching internship
in the NFL with
Buffalo Bills‘From day
dot, my
goal has
been to
bridge
the gap
between
the US
and the
UK’
JEFF GILBERTinvolved in the sport for much longer
deserved that more than me.
“But I figured if I could just get all
the little things down, even something
as simple as if one of the guys asks
me what time this meeting starts
I would have the answer for them and
they would start coming to me every
time. It seems really minute, but when
you can build up trust like that it’s
huge.”
What has followed – a season-long
internship at the NCAA Division One
college programme at Bryant
University (where she slept in the head
coach’s basement and worked for free),
consultancy work with NFL UK and
even a full season at the Bills for thereally put us in contention for medals
and hopefully a team medal as well.”
An Olympic spot for Team GB will
be secured if either of the pair – or
fellow Brits Francesca Summers and
Jess Varley – finishes in the top eight.
Like Muir, French, who won silver in
last year’s Europeans, was introduced
to pentathlon through the Pony Club.
“We are really fortunate we came in
that route because riding is the hardest
thing to pick up,” she says. “A lot of‘When I started
athletics at 12, I
actually wasn’t very
good at all. I even
embarrassed my mum’
2018-19 campaign – shows she must
have made an incredible impression in
that life-changing fortnight.
The Bills made a winning start to
the season in their opener on
Thursday, but I was baffled to learn
that Schecter would not be joining
them after the European
Championships. Instead, she is taking
a sabbatical to commit fully to
developing the game here. A bold
move some would say, but Schecter is
as excited talking about her work with
the UK Dukes, an organisation aiming
to increase grass-roots participation
(with Schecter taking a special interest
in female growth), as her time with the
Bills.“I’ve had a crazy moment in my life
and I’m staying here for the season.
[The Bills] are being so supportive,”
she says.
“From day dot, my underlying goal
has always been bridging the gap
between the US and UK. I thought it
was the best time to see what I can do
to help. The European Champs should
be a huge opportunity for this country
to see what we’re doing with this
sport.
‘‘There’s lots of positive things going
on now for women in the sport, we
need to ride the wave.”
It is just another twist in a sporting
career trajectory few could have
predicted.her lifetime horse habit and replaced it
with her newfound “addiction” –
contact sports. As a defensive
linebacker, Schecter’s position
involves some of the hardest hitting in
the game. It is one of her favourite
elements though, and she even plays
in a mixed full-contact American
football league where she is the only
woman in her team, getting tackled by,
and tackling men, twice her size.
“You get two types of [men] – those
that say, ‘She’s a girl, she shouldn’t be
here’, and they come for you, or who
don’t want to hit me because I am a
girl,” she says laughing.
She also did strength and
conditioning coaching for the sport’s
Great Britain association and helped
develop the women’s team on their
rise to fourth-best in the world. And,
thanks to her dual citizenship, she will
captain the team at this week’s
European Championships in Leeds
alongside all self-funded team-mates
and volunteer coaches.
Schecter is also England captain in
kabaddi, an invasion game popular in
Asia which she compares to British
bulldog with tackling. Watching
YouTube highlights of the aggressive
low tackling – or “carnage” as Schecter
puts it – makes the appeal clear.
But, of Schecter’s wide-reaching
sporting achievements, her most
prolific was becoming one of a handful
of women to coach in the NFL, starting
with a Buffalo Bills coaching
internship in 2017. A rapid turnaround
for someone who never even cared
about American football until 2013.
But, upon meeting the charismatic
29-year-old, it becomes obvious how
she managed such a rise. Her
infectious energy had me considering
signing up for an American football
session about 15 minutes into meeting
her, so it is unsurprising that upon
applying to five NFL teams via a
diversity internship scheme, she had
to turn down offers before taking up
the Bills position. That two-week
summer camp pushed Schecter right
into the deep end.
“It’s very daunting. These guys
know so much more than me about
football, I was working with the
defence team, and the head coach said,
‘How do we get the players to respect
you?’ So he took my highlight reel and
showed the guys. They were like,
‘That’s sick, she’s better at tackling
than us’, and since then they’ve been
so supportive, some sending over
videos for our GB teams wishing them
good luck.”
But for all her enthusiasm, Schecter
was plagued by self-doubt during her
first tenure with the Bills and had to
find ways to negotiate an impostor
syndrome brought on by foreign
football jargon and being the only
woman on the sidelines.
“At first it was a little rocky. It was
an incredible opportunity and I kind of
felt like other people who had beenРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS