Isis Holt back on track

After a two year hiatus, teenage sensation Isis Holt is ready to lace up her spikes once again, and her intentions are clear. She’s ready take back her place on the Australian Para-athletics Team at the Tokyo Games next year.

At just 14, a diminutive Isis Holt shook up the international Para-athletics scene when she stormed home to win two gold medals in world record time at the 2015 World Para Athletics Champions.

By the time she was 17, she’d amassed a total of nine world records, three Paralympic medals, a Commonwealth Games gold and four world titles.

But what was next for Isis? She'd experienced the highest of highs as an athlete, but looking back on her formative years, she felt she had missed so much.

“I always used to talk about wanting to do normal teenage stuff. I was keen to have the opportunity to be a normal kid, and then I did that for a year, and I realised my values," she said.

“I realised how much I loved being fit and how much I liked challenging myself physically, and then I realised, there’s no place quite like the athletics track.”

Finishing high school, Holt knew she wanted to continue her studies but just before she sat for her first VCE exam, something sparked her to rewatch her races from Rio and the London 2017 World Championships.

“I was just reminiscing a little bit over what I used to do all the time, and I was sort of having a think about it,” she said.

“And I knew that if I could come back and approach everything from a different perspective, one where I had a little bit more life experience and I was a little bit more educated on the training, the process and what it means to be an athlete, I thought, I could give it another shot.

“It was just like it hit me one day. I was ready to come back.”

A natural born athlete, Holt admits she had never really experienced the climb to the top. She took up sprinting less than a year before making her international debut, to “try something new” but the transition back to the track hasn’t been quite as easy.

“It’s actually been pretty challenging. With Covid-19 and everything that’s sort of happened this year, it's been a real learning process. Even in my mindset towards training having basically started from scratch again," she said.

“I’ve had to become comfortable with the fact that I’m not just going to start off back where I was a few years ago and it does take a lot of persistence and training to actually get back to that.

“Having said that, it’s also been really, really exciting because I’ve been able to challenge myself to do things that previously I never even considered as an athlete.”

While she had much success under the tutelage of Nick Wall, Holt has relocated to Queensland is now coached by Paul Pearce, who she worked closely with at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

“I’ve come up to Queensland and I’m training up here and I’m really giving it my full attention without having to worry about too much else, and we’ve come at training and programming from a different perspective," she said.

“I think once, especially when I was younger, and still sort of developing as an athlete and  as a person, we weren’t entirely sure what my body was capable of doing.

“This time around, we’re very aware but we have the time now to play around with different things and we’re challenging my limits.

“I’m focussing on sprinting endurance, which I never used to do quite as much as I do now, and we’re doing a lot of balance, and weight bearing. We’ve got time to play with, while before I was going from one major to the next, and there wasn’t a chance to step back and work on all the things that can add up to me being my best long term.”

While Isis has only been back on track for less than year, she’s fired up for the domestic season ahead.

“It’s hard to say where I’m at because I’ve got nothing to compare myself to yet,” she said.

“The benefit of starting again is that I know I’m not going to be the best straight away, which is daunting, but it’s exciting to see where we start and where we can go to from here.”

Wise beyond her years, Holt says a major focus of hers is not compare her current form to her previous record of success as she aims for her second Paralympics in Tokyo.

“It’s hard not to compare myself, because I still remember what it feels like to be fit and run really fast.

“But I feel really good. Training-wise, there is still a lot of trial and error going on in terms of figuring out what works and what doesn’t, but I'm already a lot faster than I was at the start of the new year," she said. 

“The great thing is that we’re doing all of this trial and error far ahead of Tokyo. If Tokyo were to have happened this year, I wouldn’t have gone for it because I wouldn’t have been prepared to run and be at my best.

“But assuming all goes to plan, I’m looking forward to seeing where I’m at by the time it comes around next August.”

By Sascha Ryner, Athletics Australia
Posted: 25/11/2020