By Owen Morgan
Wales’ most successful female pole vaulter is hoping to scale even greater heights as she heads for her third Commonwealth Games.
Sally Peake, who won a silver medal at the Glasgow games four years ago, has spoken of her pride at being selected for April’s event which is being held on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Following this week’s announcement of the Wales athletics team which will be heading Down Under, Peake told Daisport: “I’m incredibly proud. The Commonwealths are the only time we get to represent Wales, which is fantastic and you always look forward to that. It’s great to be going to my third one, so I’m super excited!
“It’s all getting a bit more real now, it’s been something that’s been a long way away for a while, now we are starting to talk about leaving dates.
“The excitement is definitely starting to build and I’m really looking forward to it. The three Commonwealths I will have been to have been in completely different situations and places which is great. And I think they are going to do an absolutely amazing job of hosting it in Australia.”
Because of the Southern Hemisphere venue, this year’s games are taking place relatively early in the athletics season, which has meant Christmas was a little quieter for the majority of those hoping to take part.
Peake said: “You normally have to plan for a major championships to be after a full outdoor season, so the whole of the winter’s preparation has been a bit different.
“So obviously a bit less fun can be had over Christmas because you have to keep concentrating on training, but it’s a bit easier for me as a pole vaulter because I can do my event indoors.
“It’s even harder for people like 400 metre hurdlers where they can’t really do their event indoors so it’s more difficult then. Coaches just have to plan it really well. I’m glad I’m not a coach, I’m glad I’m an athlete!
“I had a rest day on Christmas Day itself but then on Boxing Day I travelled to Tenerife to do a training camp there for a week so that we can be away from some of the distractions like New Year’s as well.”
The four-time British Champion and Welsh indoor and outdoor record holder feels her winter preparations for the Gold Coast are paying off. “Things are good at the moment it’s always a big goal to stay fit and healthy through the winter, not pick up too many niggles, and that side of things has gone really well, so hopefully that’s going to reflect in the competition season.
“I just want to make sure I’m in the best possible form I can be at the Commonwealths and jump as high as I possibly can. You can’t really worry about what anyone else is doing. I just want to be focussing on me and make sure I have as good a season as I can leading up to the games.
“It would be nice to jump a personal best leading up to it, that would put you in the best possible frame of mind going into the competition.”
The next phase of Peake’s preparation will be to complete as full an indoor season as possible before heading off to Australia.
The Birchfield Harrier said: “I’m going to compete indoors, including the Welsh Championships this weekend, which I’m really looking forward to, and then I’ll go to Australia relatively early because it is different practising and competing outside. I’ll probably do a couple of competitions outdoors in Australia before the Commonwealths.”
Peake says winning silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow is the highlight of her athletics career so far, which also saw her finish ninth at the New Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010, just a couple of years after taking up the pole vault in 2008.
The 31-year-old said: “Winning silver at the last Commonwealths is right there up at the top of my career so far.
“It’s the best day I’ve had in athletics. It was in a stadium where my best friends and my mum were able to be there too, so I got to share it with them which made it even more special. I would say it’s my top moment to date for sure.
“I’m very grateful to have had it, it makes all the training and everything you go through worth it when you get a moment like that.”
Not that Peake had much time to savour her success in Glasgow. Like the vast majority of athletes the pole vaulter has a day job and soon had to head back to Cardiff where she worked as a physiotherapist.
She recalls: ” I competed on the Saturday, we got transport back to Cardiff on the Monday and I was back in work on the Tuesday.
“It was a very surreal, bizarre feeling. I had to be in work that day, but I wasn’t very with it. I was caught in the moment and thinking about what I’d just come from and all of the rest of it.
“But the people in work and done a big congratulations display so that was really nice, but it was a bit bizarre to be straight back into it.”
Peake worked as a physio to the Welsh women’s international football team. However, she had to give up the post due to the amount of travelling it involved and the competing pressures with her own athletics career.
She explained: “It became difficult because when they went away on international duty, it would be for about 10 or 11 days, obviously I wasn’t really able to do that so I had to stop working for them.
“But I absolutely loved doing that and it would probably be something I would look to pick back up again when I finish athletics.”
Juggling their competitive sporting careers with their day jobs is something a high percentage of international athletes have to contend with.
“It’s a small minority who can say athletics is their job,” says Peake.
“Most athletes have to work in some other capacity. I’m privileged because of the work that I do I am able to work part time, I can work around my training because I do it privately, I don’t work for the NHS.
” I’m very lucky because that’s what I’m able to do. But it does make it more difficult to have a job as well. The public don’t really see all the behind the scenes stuff leading up to what you do on the day in competition.”
However, despite all the hard work and conflicting demands, Peake would recommend athletics, and the pole vault in particular, to any youngster considering taking up the sport.
“Give it a go”, she says. “I came to pole vault very late, I was actually 22 before I even picked up a pole and started, which is something, if I could go back in time, I would definitely change because it’s brought me so much joy and so many opportunities.
“I do wish I had done it earlier because it’s a very technical event so you need a lot of years in it. I didn’t really know very much about the sport and you couldn’t really do it in school.
“I did gymnastics and long jump and triple jump and eventually I kind of fell into the pole vault and it was the thing for me because it was so much fun. So if you’re out there and you have a bit of a gymnastic background, you can run and jump and you like that kind of thing, then definitely get out there and try because it’s loads of fun.
“It’s allowed me to travel the world pole vaulting, I’ve done it in India, China, the US, and now I’m about to do it in Australia.
“You have moments when you wonder why on earth you do it and then you have moments which remind you exactly why you do it. I will always be very thankful that I picked up a pole in the first place.”
Hopefully, there will be plenty more memorable moments for Peake this spring. The women’s pole vault final takes place on Friday, April 13.