Winter Olympic champion Lizzy Yarnold OBE recently visited Burgess Hill Girls School as the guest of honour at the school’s Junior Sports Day.
Winning consecutive Olympic gold medals in 2014 and 2018, she is the most successful British Winter Olympian and the most successful Olympic Skeleton athlete of all time.
She gave a speech about the challenges she faced in her bid to be an Olympian.
Lizzy revealed that at the age of 18, she realised she wasn’t going to make it as a javelin thrower and began to explore other events to realise her dream of becoming an Olympian.
Through UK Sport’s Girls4Gold talent identification programme, she was identified as having potential in skeleton.
Lizzy told the audience that failing is good, along with her own motto, “Succeed and celebrate; fail and you learn.” As she pointed out, you don’t win much in life, “so it is very important to deal with losing and to see it as a positive.”
Heather Cavanagh, head of the school, said: “She’s so down to earth and modest and has overcome so many setbacks in her quest to become an Olympian. Determination and resilience are such important life skills for young people. She’s a fantastic role model for girls who want to succeed in life, in sport or any other field.”