Gail Emms

There's more booze in that fridge than I have in a year I reckon. Is she doing a Wiggo ?

I meant what Wiggo did in his time off - he hit the pub hard ?

I've no idea of the demands of a pro Badminton player - but there must have been recovery time where she could have pondered the future and maybe got another qualification or something ?

I can only agree with the sentiments of unrealistic and entitled. My empathy bank is empty on this one. The story of the grasshopper and the ants comes to mind.

Oh. Her Olympic medal was in 2004. And her last Olympics 2008 after which she retired.

Sounds like she's done well to get to 2017 without having to find work ?

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I read it as her just saying she's struggling, not that it's all someone elses fault and the rest of us should fund her for the rest of her life. OK she briefly mentions help for athletes to transition from sport to real life but it isn't the main theme of the article.

Isn't it a good thing that people are able to say actually my life isn't where I thought it would be right now - the alcohol is neither here nor there - maybe she was having a party - presumably she took the photo because she thinks a fridge full of alcohol is unusual - she hasn't said she is destitute after all.

but does say

"I cry a lot and do what I can to make the payment, sell stuff on eBay and hope there is enough work next month."

Now if I was having to sell on ebay to pay bills, you wouldn't find champagne in my fridge.

Dinyull wrote:

My original point was, why is she being praised for coming out and admitting she's struggling when she herself has pretty much admitted she did little to prevent it. Just don't understand the praise - if this was someone from an undesirable estate who was born into poverty they be looked down upon, but we're supposed to praise/sympathise her because she has a silver medal?

I think it's the whole "she's so brave for opening up and admitting how hard she's finding it" thing that everyone is lapping up at the moment.

The sports science degree with her name on it is worth FAR more than my GNVQ and A/S level. If I was jacking in pro sport - one which doesn't really pay a prolific salary like cycling (admittedly the Wiggins's and Cav's aren't party to the norm) football, cricket or rugby or have the potential to attract massive endorsement deals (Bolt, for instance) I probably wouldn't have taken 9 years off work, kids or not. Yes, I feel sorry for her in a way, but her career could have ended unfortunately at any single moment during the 10 years she was at the top of her sport. I'd have had far more sympathy if she had to pack in at her prime, being left with nothing at that point.

The fridge full of booze seems to tie in with her birth date - perhaps she didn't buy any (or all) of it. it certainly isn't a normal fridge for a family with two kids. Even when I was an alcoholic, I had margarine.

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

I feel this is the down side of so many sports who's success has come from Lottery money etc. The sports men and women get funded to play full time and little thought is put into what happens next. Think of all the Olympic sports that we did well in in the last games and how many of them are what you would call blue riband events. Track cycling pays little unless the riders go on to race on the road and even then it's hardly pop star wages.

This. You get people leaving school and going straight into funded sport and never really thinking what comes next. Whilst I wouldn't want elite sports people going back 20 odd years where they trained mornings and evenings around a full time job (those in less successful Olympic sports still do this) I do think there should be an onus put on those receiving funding to consider life outside the sport. We see plenty of examples of people thinking of it as a job and getting upset when their funding stops rather than realising they are being funded to train.

Unfortunately for Emms she missed that slot where she was fairly well known and could have potentially built a minor media career.

Pross wrote:

Trivial poursuivant wrote:

I feel this is the down side of so many sports who's success has come from Lottery money etc. The sports men and women get funded to play full time and little thought is put into what happens next. Think of all the Olympic sports that we did well in in the last games and how many of them are what you would call blue riband events. Track cycling pays little unless the riders go on to race on the road and even then it's hardly pop star wages.

This. You get people leaving school and going straight into funded sport and never really thinking what comes next. Whilst I wouldn't want elite sports people going back 20 odd years where they trained mornings and evenings around a full time job (those in less successful Olympic sports still do this) I do think there should be an onus put on those receiving funding to consider life outside the sport. We see plenty of examples of people thinking of it as a job and getting upset when their funding stops rather than realising they are being funded to train.

Unfortunately for Emms she missed that slot where she was fairly well known and could have potentially built a minor media career.

Yeah this is what I thought when I saw the story, with centralised funding she was in a position where she didn't realise playing badmington is still pretty much a hobby and she just happened to be doing it full-time. I don't mean calling it a hobby in the sense of deriding it as a sport and her achievements just that outside the Olympics it's hardly ever heard of and in fact if wasn't an Olympic event we'd likely never hear of it, so there is no professional structure to allow people to support themselves as a career. Being she was one of a partnership though I wonder how he has faired since?

I've never had a beer fridge but then again I've not got an Olympic medal either....

I'd be surprised if there's no resources there to transition into retirement from Team GB. There should be anyway.
She's been retired for eight years now and should have found something?

I feel for her a bit, but she's been retired for a decade and entered the job market about the same age as me, give or take, but with a little fame thrown in. She hasn't managed to cut her cloth in the interim, and is upset because she can't break into the media fully.

Well, guess what, badminton is a minority sport. Kind of up there with whiff whaff. So on the one hand the Lord giveth - allowing you to the top of a relatively small mountain. But on the other hand the Lord taketh away, because the public only give a crap for 2 weeks every 4 years.

Personally, I had to give up my dream of being a race car driver, astronaut, pro footballer, pro cyclist and movie star. I had to get another job instead.

---

Some more context - I bought my single scull off a GB rower. World champ, Olympian I think. I don't know him personally, but he's in his mid-30s and last time I saw was retraining as a financial adviser. Guess, what, rowing doesn't pay 99.9% of the time. Its a minority sport. I've been given physio by an ex-Canadian Olympic sculler, and orthopaedic advice from an ex-England fly half (pre-professionalism). All these people realised they had a short shelf life and re-trained.

This woman needs to be less of a princess.

cougie wrote:

I've never had a beer fridge but then again I've not got an Olympic medal either....

You don't need one to get the other ...

I had a beer fridge ... ok - shared it with some fruit & veg - but it was my beer fridge ... it's now our overflow fridge with a couple of beers in - seems mostly to have food in for Little Slowbike ... oh how the times change ..

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I just read it again to see what I've missed. I really don't get the criticism, to me it reads like an admission she's made mistakes, maybe been a bit naive and is now finding the work is drying up and ahe's facing the prospect of a minimum wage job and scraping by. Yes lots of people live like that but I doubt many of us would choose to at 40 years old. Maybe she is hoping someone will read it and offer her something - if so why not better than being proud and possibly missing the opportunity.

Or, is it an attempt to raise her profile?

On a human level I sympathise with mental health demons and career struggles, really I do. I think the annoyance she's invoked (at least for me) is that she comes over as feeling entitled. How come the bosses at UK Sport don't know how hard it is? How come employers don't realise how great I am?

Her problem is not that her CV reads "badminton for 10 years", because a lot of employers will realise that the dedication it takes to succeed in sport is a very transferable skill. What she conspicuously fails to acknowledge is that her CV unfortunately now has a 19 year gap, not a 10 year one. Any employer might now look at those further 9 years and question how well they've been used - i.e. its undermining the impression of dedication that her sporting achievements give.

Effectively, from an employer's perspective she is now trying to switch careers from a media career to a normal job. Well, how do you do change career Gail? You re-train completely, or you get up to date with your sports science and try to use that. Its hard when you are in your 30s or 40s, but that's just tough and lots of people have to do it.

Her article doesn't mention any such efforts, which may be why she's not getting a "normal" job.

So I suppose that her underlying message has some merit, but the tone hasn't really worked. Unfortunate if you want a career in the media.

By the way, it looks like a fridge with beer in it to me, not a beer fridge.

Dont see much wrong with her twitter page tbh ?