Interview with the gymnast Sonia Lawrence

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FOLLOWING THE FLAME
Sonia Lawrence Interview (with John McFall)


I was born in Caerphilly on 19 January 1980, grew up in Bedwas. I’m one of six, one brother and four sisters, and we all have done gymnastics in the past. Gymnastics was the sport I chose because my older brother and sister started doing it and everything that they did I wanted to do, so nagged mummy to take me along which she did, fell in love with the sport, always active at home. I think she was quite glad that we’d actually go into gymnastics and used some of our energy there, so we’d at least be a little bit tired when we came home. That’s how my career in sport began, at the age of four.


what i always wanted to do

I remember everything so vividly and, although people couldn’t really say at that age, “Oh, she’s going to be a very good gymnast”, I knew myself it’s what I wanted to do. As early as competitions from the age of five and six, I knew there were other gymnasts doing slightly more than me, so knew I needed to train more, so used to nag my mum, you know, “We need to change clubs because I know that those girls from that club are doing a little bit more”, and from the age of seven I was aware that I needed to be doing more. So, that’s what my mother did, bless her, with so many kids in tow. She was our little taxi driver and we went to Heol Ddu Gymnastics Club in Bargoed, and me and my older sister and sister below me started training there four days a week.

in the genes

I was aware of people around me and what they were doing and I knew what I needed to do, three days a week after school and on the weekend, just gradually became more and more as I progressed. I realised I needed to give all of my free time to it and that’s the way it went. I had a lot of pressure from friends in school, “Are you coming out this weekend?”. At that sort of age, when you’re going over friends’ houses, I couldn’t do it because as soon as I came home from school I remember it was like, regimented, it was home at three thirty, upstairs, get changed into leotard, downstairs, mam would have food ready for us, sit down get your hair done and your plaits and then in the car and off you go. It was like clockwork, in at half three and we had to be out of the door at ten to four, and it was like that every day really and, yeah, I don’t regret it. I loved it and if you ever didn’t want to go to school because we were ill, my mum would always get us there by saying that “If you don’t go to school, you don’t go to gym”. So, yes, I didn’t miss many days in school because of that.

I was quite lucky. My dad was into his motorbikes and my dad was very competitive, and he was always racing and competing. So, as youngsters, we used to go away on the bus, all of us watching my dad race. Competitive sport was part of my upbringing, and I think because I used to go to gym with my brothers and sisters as well, it wasn’t like I was the only one in the family doing it.

When I finished gymnastics and I went into coaching, obviously I could tell the difference between parents who, not mollycoddled their children but you know the difference between the parents who said, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re fine. Just get on with it” and those who said, “Oh, I think they’re doing too much!”. I was just one of those fortunate ones whose parents didn’t mind if you came home with a bruise. I broke my arm when I was six doing gymnastics and that didn’t stop me. It was just part of what you had to do to learn I suppose.

We all did very well. My younger sister should have been far better than me as a gymnast. Mentally, she didn’t want it as much, but physically she was much better, and that’s always hard for me because I coached her. I couldn’t give her the determination that I had when I was doing gymnastics.

dedication

At the age of 12, I had to move away. I had to live in London to do my gymnastics because - although the club in Heol Ddu was very very good and it took me to a certain level - there weren’t any coaches that would train me full time, so unfortunately I had to move away. The Welsh National Coach at the time, Gareth Davies was living in a place called Ashford near Staines which had its own gymnastics club and that’s where we went for squad training. The gym in Cardiff - which we used to go to as well - burnt down, so we couldn’t train there anymore. I started training away for three weeks, coming home for a week. I remember my mum was pregnant with my youngest sister, so it was very difficult being away from home, I loved being at home with mum and my sisters and my brother and in the end it was put to me, “You’re doing very well living away” - I’d gone to the British Championships and came second - and mum had to ask me, “You have to make a decision. You either stay and go to school or you train full time”. I always knew I could go back to school, I couldn’t go back to gymnastics, so I made the decision at the age of 12 that gymnastics was what I was going to do and I left home. Kind of scary but ...

i’ve got potential

I think it was after I had been living in Staines for a year and we were preparing for the Junior British Championships and nobody had heard of me, nobody knew what club I came from. My coach prepared me in a way that I don’t think that anybody else could have. It was quite a transformation from leaving home with long brown hair down to my hips, then, all of a sudden, “Come on, in the hairdressers, get a haircut”, ponytail, little things like that that make you transform into a gymnast. It sounds really weird but the training that I had, the way that he prepared me mentally, physically, I went into that competition with so much confidence and nobody knew who I was which made it easier for me to do what I needed to do. Story of my life: I came second by a margin, nought point something or other and that’s where my career really took off and really where I knew that I could compete with the rest of them. I was selected, then, for the British Squad and then got taken on a Pre-Olympic Camp, so it all happened quite quickly and sort of hit me that, “Hang on a second. I’ve gone from sort of nothing to all of a sudden British Squad Pre-Olympic training. I’ve got potential to go to the Olympics here.”

The competition was in 1993 - the Junior British Championships. It was just a whirlwind. A month after that, I was in America for four weeks, and it just didn’t stop then. Training got more and harder and as a result schooling suffered, although I picked that up later on. That’s where I remember feeling like a gymnast and actually saying, “Yes, I am a gymnast, not just Sonia school girl”. That’s when it changed for me.

commonwealth games 1994

Yeah, unbelievable. Again, the way my coach had prepared me, mentally. It wasn’t like any other competition. It sounds bizarre, the year before we’d gone out to the Pre-Commonwealth Games, an adventure in itself with me losing my passport on the way over and first time ever being abroad, so that taught me a lot in one go. We’d been to the venue before so things like that weren’t new to me but the way that he prepared me, all of us, the Welsh team, was in a way that we just weren’t phased. We were all managed so well, prepared so well. We were a pretty young team obviously - with me being the youngest - and nobody expected anything of us. As a team, we came fourth overall, which was the best result we’d ever had and I was the best, getting a silver medal. I had made two finals that day, and they’d expected the medal on the floor not the vault. The floor had been the best piece of apparatus that I’d done the previous day, scored the highest and then for whatever reason I fell on the Finals’ Day. I’d performed a vault on the Finals’ Day that I had never done before and yeah, got a silver medal. Even then, I only knew I did really well because my coach gave me a hug, and he was always so, sort of, strict, getting out of me what he needed to, so I knew when he put his arm around me and said, “Well done”, I knew what I had done. Other than that, it was like any other competition which was fantastic because I wasn’t phased.

Obviously, when I got there, it was such an amazing feeling for me, the village, every little aspect of that. It’s the best thing ever and I think if anybody is doing sport, the one thing to inspire them to go is to experience what it’s like living in a village because it’s out of this world. I remember being 14 and thinking they’ve got a hairdressers here and the food hall was bigger than anything I’d ever seen, and we went whale watching and it was fab. I had a fantastic time and obviously winning a medal, the opening ceremony … I could talk forever. The opening ceremony was amazing, mum crying because they had seen me on the TV and then speaking to mum after the competition, knowing that they’d seen me on the TV. They were quite shocked because living away from home I don’t think they quite realised what level I was and I suppose I didn’t either really, so it was fantastic. It was definitely my best memory.

recognition?

In Wales, I would have said yes; in the UK no. In Wales, I think, being the youngest person ever to have won a medal and the only female gymnast to have won a medal … and I still am. There still hasn’t been anybody since those Games, female, who’s won a medal in Gymnastics. Because I was still in the sport and focused on what I needed to do on my next goal, the Olympics, the media and things like that wasn’t something I needed. It’s not why I did the sport. If I look back, I did get a lot of attention. It was weird walking around the supermarkets: “Oh, that’s the girl that won a medal”. It made me feel I had recognition but it wasn’t why I did my sport. Gymnastics is a minority sport. It’s not really seen as anything like, perhaps, athletics, not when I was doing it.

14 years old

I had a particularly busy year because the way the aging system went in gymnastics I was able to compete as a Junior but also as a Senior, but I was the youngest senior so I think I done something silly like seventeen competitions that year which, in a way, kind of held me back because when you’re competing you can’t train and improve your skills. But, at the same time, I needed to do it because there wasn’t anybody else there and it was a decision that myself and my coach took. So, it was a very busy year with Junior Europeans and things like that, and 1995 was World Championships in Japan, travelled all over. It was fantastic, you know, for a childhood to be all over the world, and that’s something that I definitely look back on.

a romanian awakening

Before the Olympic Games, I’d spend six weeks in Romania. That was definitely a time that changed my view on gymnastics, sadly. I think living in Romania for six weeks with World Olympic Champions - seeing how they trained and the level that they were, all that I was giving up yet I was never getting anywhere near them - it really hit me. I went out there to try and get to the Olympic Games and, as John mentioned in his talk, that for some people getting to the Olympics, getting to the Olympics is their Olympic medal … and for me it was. I knew I was never going to be able to win an Olympic medal and for me the hardest part of my training was getting on the plane in the first place, to say that I’m going. In those six weeks in Romania, it was a very challenging time for me because I had to deal with what am I actually doing? Six hours a day, six days a week training as a gymnast to not be anywhere near what these are doing in Romania.

The gymnastics sessions are part of their school. The coaches go into the school at the age of four and they are picked out, and their girls that aren’t in their Olympic team, that are just in their recreational team, were better than what I was. That was tough and it applied to all the other British gymnasts as well, but for me, it was a challenge. I had to get myself together and think you know, “Why am I doing this?”. I had chats with my mum and my coach about all this effort I’m putting in to not being Olympic medal winner, that I couldn’t even think of that, so it was quite challenging.

my olympic medal

But the six weeks in Romania definitely are what got me to the Olympics. We’d competed in the previous year at the World Championships, which for gymnastics you have to come in the top twelve to get a team to go to the Olympics and we came 18th. We’d spent four months together training as a team and, all of a sudden, knowing only two of us are going to go, that was again a difficult moment. We all travelled up to Lilleshall: they decided, the coaches amongst themselves that we would do a weekend of competition to see who would go to the Olympic Games, and it was decided not to tell us our scores. You did a set routine which was given to you by the Federation of Gymnastics, you all did the same, and a voluntary routine which was the best skills you could do. First day, there was, I think, eight of us trying to go to the Olympics, obviously for two places. After the first day, they told us where we were ranked and I was second and one of the other coaches was not happy with that, with his girl being in third, so there was a bit of harassment and trying to psyche gymnasts out and saying, “You shouldn’t be in that position”. At 16 years of age, I was a tough cookie. I gave as good as I got, it didn’t phase me, and fortunately for me, I managed to get the second place. Beam was never my forte. I used to fall off all the time, and in that competition, when it came to the beam routine if I’d fallen off, I wasn’t going and I knew that, so, I remember it … standing at the end and looking down that beam and just praying, “I need to stay on” and I did, and it was the only time I had ever stayed on in a competition, but it’s when I needed to do it most, and to me, that was my Olympic medal and that’s what got me there.

commonwealth games 1998

I’d only broken my arm at the age of six and that was the only injury I had up until I was 16, tendonitus of the knee, of my patella, and yeah, that sort of hindered me then from 16 onwards. I had an operation to remove a cyst and just never really got back after that. I had a couple of injections, had about a year off, really, just sort of swinging on bars and conditioning, so the Commonwealth Games in 1998 in Malaysia was a difficult because I hadn’t had the preparation. Coming from being a medal winner to going in injured, it was difficult. I’d had an injection before I got on the aeroplane to hope that it would numb the pain but, unfortunately, it just didn’t work, so it was a really difficult one for me. I tried to just enjoy the fact that I was competing for Wales. I always loved to compete for Wales. Obviously, the Olympic Games as Great Britain was the pinnacle of my career but putting on a Welsh leotard for me, I don’t know, it made me tingle and it was what I loved to do. I really knew that Malaysia would be the last time that I would compete for Wales, and I just enjoyed it more than anything. The team needed me so that’s why it was decided that I would go and perform as best I could.

a tough decision

I had to make some tough decisions then, when I came home, you know, after injury. Do I carry on doing gymnastics until the next Olympics or not? I sat down with my coach and it sounds awful to say it but I’d been to one Olympics and the way I had to look at it was - because I knew I wouldn’t win a medal at the next one - do I do another Olympics to say I’ve got two Olympic Games on my CV or one Olympics which I already had and go home and get an education? And that was the decision I made. A tough one, but I knew it was right and I knew I needed to do the promise I made my mum and get an education!

hard running

I suppose strange but then, when you think about it, it is so similar to gymnastics that it kind of follows on. It was actually in Malaysia in the Commonwealth Games that I was making the decision to retire and I’d been competing with Jamie Baulch since I was 14 years of age, off to the Commonwealth Games, and I had a chat with him and said, “What else can I do?” Somebody had suggested diving but I thought, “I’ve spent the last however many years landing on my feet, I don’t think I can now land on my hands”, and he suggested pole vaulting because it was a fairly new sport for females and I thought, “Right, okay”, and it stuck in my head.

I retired from gymnastics at the age of 18, moved back home, had a year off, did nothing and managed to get into university and, at the age of 20, I decided to try pole vaulting and hunted a coach down. The bit on the pole was the easy bit; it was the running I had trouble with, running with pointed toes and gymnastic like. For the first few months my coach corrected that, running around the track forever, which I didn’t like to correct my running technique. As soon as I had a pole in my hand, as soon as I took off, the gymnastics kicked in and then I progressed quite quickly. The hardest bit was the running.

I progressed pretty quickly and I think within the first six months I had my British vest. Within the first year, I was British under-23 record holder. I think I probably progressed too quickly. I had a very good coach - he was coaching Jason Gardner at the time, a sprinter - so I had good running technique from him, and he was a trampolinist and a pole vaulter himself, so I couldn’t have picked a better coach, but I don’t know whether I progressed too quickly. I didn’t have the foundation to understand the sport enough and the conditioning and I just started to pick up little niggles. I had a pelvic injury which hindered me. I got to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002 and, unfortunately, I was in a lot of pain but competed.

a proper job?

It was decided that, after the competition, I would take a few months off to correct that injury which I did with a lot of rehab, and started back again and had Achilles problems, ruptured my Achilles tendon. I wouldn’t say it ended my career. I think mentally it made me have a serious sort of think and talk to myself about what I was going to do. I was 24 years of age. Was I going to carry on? Was I going to go back? I did try. I didn’t want to be sort of injured, retire and never go back. I did actually do one more pole vaulting competition. What was I? 25 I think. After that, I realised it’s going to take me too long now to get back up to where I was and perhaps I should actually think about getting a job and earning some proper money … and that was the decision.

At the time, I was working as a medical rep whilst I was training, because it was a very flexible job and I could train in the afternoons and work my training around my job. It wasn’t where my heart was, so I’ve recently changed and am now working in Sports Development. I would love to be able to coach again. Unfortunately, there’s not the money. I think that’s what I find hard: there’s all the passion for sport and knowledge that I would love to be able to give back to people but it’s finding a job in sport that one, isn’t always on contracts, and two, that there’s enough money in it. I did coach gymnastics when I moved back home, coached my sister for a while, and coached the Welsh team while I was competing as a pole vaulter. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough money and with me training as well and needing to look at things like getting a house, I had to get a full time job.

dreams

I know it sounds corny but I have found the man of my dreams and I’m very happy that I found somebody who has similar interests as me and we gel so well together. For me, having the next step in my life, of getting married and having children, I think, something that obviously we’re working together, so that’s definitely at the forefront of what I see.

Me and John (McFall) had known each other for about five years or so and just through training and me pole vaulting. He always says he first met me with a pole in my hand! I always remember his smiley face and the both of us - everyone says we could do Colgate adverts because we’re always so smiley with the biggest mouths in the world!

Our paths never really crossed in a way for us to develop a relationship until after I had retired. Being injured all the time as a pole vaulter, my physio Sian who is a very good friend of mine now was also John’s physio and knew I was single and John was single and she was the one who said, “Do you want to go on a blind date?” At first I was, “I don’t know. I’m not really looking for anything”, and she asked me again a couple of weeks later and I thought, “Yeah, why not? I trust you. You know what I like in men”. She knew I was very very fussy. I knew she would have got somebody who ticked all the right boxes and then I went home back to my mum’s house and, all of a sudden, John came on the news for some reason, always on the TV doing something! I looked and I thought, “I bet you it’s him”, and I phoned her up and said, “Is it John McFall?” “How did you guess?” We started emailing, or face-booking as you do these days. John was away in Portugal training and when he got back we arranged to meet up. It was the day I got the keys to this house actually, and he was the first visitor in and, let’s just say, the rest is history. That was it. We went off to Mumbles for a date, did nothing but speak - which I’m sure you’re well aware of now having interviewed us both - and yeah, we progressed pretty quickly from there really, and we’re both very happy.

Other than that, I would love to be involved with gymnastics, again. I’m lucky that my gymnastics coach has sold his gym in London and he’s moved back to Wales and is opening a gym club in Bridgend, hopefully in the next month or so, and I definitely see myself working with him. I tried to nag him when I first left his house when I was nineteen to please come back to Wales and open a gym so I can coach with him. He’s definitely one of the best coaches at gymnastics in the UK, as well as worldwide. He’s had three Olympians and I would love to be able to work with him and I would love to have my own gymnastics club. I would absolutely love that and be able to support my other half in his medical career.

Or do what my mum did. Everyone used to joke and say to her you’ve got your own little gymnastics team there. John and me, we’ve got good genes so, yeah, it will be interesting to see what our children do.

Three words to describe myself. I’m caring - that’s definite – fun-loving, happy - that’s already three - caring, happy and determined.

And your words for John (McFall): funny, committed and a liability!! (Laughs) In a nice way!

(interview conducted by Phil Cope on 25 October 2010)