Jenny Wallwork interview: Coming out of retirement to win national title and reflections on quitting elite sport a decade ago

Wallwork has for a long-time been content with the decision she made in 2013 to walk out on the sport she had dedicated her life to when she was still in her prime.

She still played for a few years in the ill-fated National Badminton League, but otherwise her life had gone on a different course to that of someone chasing more Commonwealth Games medals and an Olympic debut.

She landed a mentoring role with the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, met her husband there, started a family with two young children and moved back to Leeds, where she had grown up. Her new life was good. Any sense of what should have been had slowly eroded with time.

And then in January, Great Britain badminton player Chloe Birch of Sheffield asked Wallwork, a two-time Commonwealth Games medallist, if she would briefly step out of retirement to come and play doubles with her in the forthcoming national championships.

“I’d been trying to keep in shape,” Wallwork tells The Yorkshire Post.

“I don’t get a lot of time to do much exercise, I try to do a bit here and there. I’ve got a four-year-old and three-year-old now, Austin and Sienna, who keep me incredibly busy. So with that my life is a bit mental.

“This was very much last minute, a couple of hours before the deadline Chloe convinced me to play. I had to do a bit cramming and play a lot of badminton before the national championships came up, but I just managed to do enough.”

That is an understatement, for armed with her years of experience, Wallwork and Birch - who were no strangers to partnering each other on the badminton court back in the day – eased past Magda-Sabrina Lozniceriu and Devon Minnis in the semi-final to set up a final with seeded duo Annie Lado and Abbygael Harris.

Despite being heavy underdogs, Birch and Wallwork tenaciously won the first game 21-19 before cruising to victory 21-11 in the second.

“After 10 years of retirement to play the national championships was fantastic,” says Wallwork.

“So when we won, it was a big shock for a lot of people, and in truth it shouldn’t really be happening after 10 years of retirement with two children later and full-time work, but it was lovely to play again, and I love playing with Chloe.”

The win, Wallwork’s fourth national title in women’s doubles and easily her most unexpected, got tongues wagging about a possible comeback.

“So many people got in touch with me asking if I was making a comeback,” laughs Wallwork.

“Do you know what I would love to compete again, it’s something I really miss, however I do love what I do now and I love my children.

“If I was to compete professionally it would be travelling all the time and I don’t want to miss that time with my children, so I’m very happy doing what I’m doing now.”

It would be natural to look at Wallwork’s win in Febraury and not ruefully think ‘what if’.

She was very much in her prime exactly a decade earlier when she quit the Badminton England set-up due to an “insecure, untrusting and incapable leadership”.

The Beijing Olympics had come too early for her, but she showed her medal-winning prowess with two bronzes and a silver in the doubles at the Commonwealth Games and European Championships of 2010.

Together with Nathan Robertson, Wallwork was part of Britain’s No 1 mixed pairing heading into London 2012 only to be overtaken in the qualifying race at the very end.

Within eight months, and in a fore-runner to problems that lay ahead later in the decade for Birch and future Rio bronze medallist Marcus Ellis of Huddersfield, the outspoken Wallwork quit the sport at that level.

She wrote at the time: “It is with regret that at the age of 26 and entering the prime of my career I feel the necessity to submit my resignation from the GB Badminton Programme.

"As the most successful female player, with 42 caps and (as) the highest world-ranked player over the last four years, I feel I have no voice or direction in the way my career is going and find myself in an impossible situation other than to remove myself from the World Class Performance Programme.

“It is an athlete’s career and not the performance director’s and an athlete should have a say in its direction. I know my dreams and aspirations were achievable, as my results and achievements so far will testify, but in my attempt to move forward in my development my views have been discounted. ‘Continue with the programme given to you or submit your resignation,’ was an ultimatum recently given to me.

“I am not prepared to be dictated to and therefore feel I am unable to continue with a programme in which I have no confidence. An unhappy player in the training environment has little or no chance of success.”

Time can be a great healer, and looking back now Wallwork says: “It was the right time to retire. I had lost a little bit of love for the sport, we had new people involved in the set-up, it wasn’t evolving in the way it should be.

“It became a bit of a dictatorship environment, we didn’t have much say in our own pathway and because of that I stopped enjoying it.

“I didn’t feel like I had any control over my own career and because of that I lost the love for it, so I stepped away.

“I do really miss it because I loved competing, and I walked away feeling I hadn’t reached my best in sport which is a shame, but the time had come so I stepped away and into the life I love so much now.”

She adds: “I do look back on my career with pride now, but at the time you take things for granted a little bit. You’re travelling all over the world, you’re competing every weekend in different countries.

“I look back on it now with really fond memories; I was No 5 in the world, No 1 in Great Britain, we medalled in the Commonwealth Games and European Championships and I can look back now and be proud of what I’ve done.”

She was clearly outspoken back then and supported Ellis and Birch for taking similarly bold steps when speaking out against the Badminton England hierarchy after the recent Tokyo Olympics.

“Ten years later I was in support of some of the things that were going on being quite outspoken myself, supporting some of the players and some of the selection for the Olympics, players being selected and then de-selected,” she says.

“There was a lot going on and I know they’ve taken those people away from the sport now and they’ve got new people involved so fingers crossed they’re on the right path, but it is going to take a long time to rebuild what’s been broken.”

As for Wallwork, save for the odd national-title winning foray back onto the badminton court, life is about family and mentoring young people.

Shortly after her prompt withdrawal from the Badminton England programme, a meeting with Adam Whitehead, the athlete manager and programme writer for the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, changed her life in more ways than one.

She married Adam and took on a role as an athlete mentor at the the Trust, guiding young people through their sporting journeys and experiences.

“When I retired from professional sport, I had a meeting with Adam and he told me about what the Trust did, the work they were doing with young people and it just sounded fantastic,” says Wallwork, who is originally from Bolton.

“Helping people was always something I was massively keen on and as soon as I heard about the ethos of what the Trust were doing and went to shadow some of the programmes and got involved in the training, I fell in love with it straight away and have been doing it ever since.

“It’s been super busy, the funding we’ve had from companies like Westfield Health has been invaluable, it’s impacting the lives of so many young people around Sheffield, for instance, which is incredible, and it’s been more often than not a full-time role.

“I love being able to work with different people every day.”

Jenny Wallwork - happy and content after the ructions of a decade ago but still capable of reminding the sport that she gave so much to just what she’s capable of when she steps back onto a badminton court.