I was a ghost of myself after injuries - Mills
Holly Mills won the British national pentathlon title in 2020
- Published
Former Great Britain heptathlete Holly Mills says the person she became through years of training "died" when injuries forced her away from the sport.
Mills missed out on a place in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 by just one place in the world rankings at the age of 21.
After finishing fourth at the World Indoor Championships and Commonwealth Games in 2022 a succession of injuries took their toll and at the end of 2025 Mills accepted her heptathlon career was over
"The person you've been for so many years, you view that person as a ghost because it's everything you were and you're not that person anymore," Mills told BBC South Today.
Mills, from Andover in Hampshire, was hoping to follow in the footsteps of British Olympic medallists Jessica Ennis-Hill, Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Kelly Sotherton.
After some impressive results things started to go wrong at the 2022 European Championships.
"I partially tore my Achilles, tried to keep going but it got to the point where I woke up on day two and could barely walk," she added.
Mills' career was blighted by injuries
"The next couple of years is when all the injuries came to me at once. I ruptured my hamstring, I had a grade four stress fracture, I had a lot of knee issues.
"When you're hit with almost career ending injuries, back to back to back and you go from rehab to injury, from rehab to injury, that was a really difficult time."
Despite months of gruelling rehab Mills could not hit the heights of her previous results.
"Once you've been at that level of international world class, coming back and only being kind of a national level, it doesn't light that fire like it used to," she said.
"You feel like everyone is looking at you and thinking, what is going on? Why is Holly so bad? And that really does impact your self-esteem and your confidence."
Last year Holly moved to Sydney and is now focusing on triathlon.
"I've moved into the hybrid space of training," she said.
"My goal over the next couple of years is to develop into hopefully professional triathlons which I think my delusional brain thinks I can do.
"Many of my friends and family have said to me - 'this is the happiest we've seen you in so long. There were points we did not think you were going to be able to drag yourself out of that hole and to see you've not only survived but you're now back thriving'."
