Heather Fisher

Eyes streaming, face distorted, arms aching and head being forced downwards; the g-force pounds Heather Fisher as she hurtles at 80mph down the fastest and steepest bobsleigh track in the world. She’d learnt every turn, but her mind is blank. Like running through ‘windmills while in a tumble drier’, not even rugby is like this.

Days after getting dropped by the England academy, Heather Fisher went into a coffee shop in Cardiff. She’d gone from being on the brink of the senior squad to having to step down to the England Students, not doing the ‘small things’ was the reasoning. Aside from the fire service, being an athlete was the only thing she ever wanted to do, and now that prospect had taken a severe hit. Pondering her next steps over a caffeine fix, she was approached by a stranger who no doubt noted the body of an athlete when they saw one. “They asked if I wanted to try out for the 2010 Olympic Games – as part of the bobsleigh team,” explains Heather as we talk at the England women’s Teddington camp. “I didn’t even know we had a team or, for that matter, what bobsleigh was – I knew about Cool Runnings and the ‘lucky egg’ and that was it.” 

Nonetheless, she went for a test run at Bath University where they have a bobsleigh run. “I did a few runs and thought it was easy, but the next day I couldn’t walk,” she says. The coach saw enough to know Heather had potential and, after doing as much training as she could before actually hitting the winter venues, eventually found herself at America’s Olympic Sports Complex, near the Canadian border. “It was before Whistler was built, so it was the fastest in the world and it’s the steepest off the top,” she says. “I was shit scared, there wasn’t one time when I ever got to the top and was excited to go down. I would just try to justify it all in my head – ‘look this is only 56 seconds of your life; in a day, there’s 1,440 minutes; and you’re worried about 56 seconds, so get a grip, you’ve got this’.”

The pep talk certainly didn’t work for the first run. “I remember sitting in and my coach pushed me off and I was like, ‘bye then’, and then it was, ‘shit there’s no turning back’. “Nobody had told me how to hold my head or shove my neck in, and I went down a few corners thinking ‘this is nice’ and then got to corner eight or nine, and it’s ‘fuck’. The speed picks up, your face goes from smiling and looking around at the sights, to my head going left, right, banging off each side. The g-force was hitting my face, eyes streaming, head being pushed down, my forearms hurting from having to grip on so tight, my abs are hurting from squeezing. 

“I’d learnt the track but I had no idea where I was or which bend I was on. I thought I’d been going 65-80mph, but it was more like 90mph. It’s literally like someone pushing you through bushes, windmills and tumble driers all in one and we had to do that three to four times a day. I had more bruises and knocks on the head from bobsleigh than I’ve ever had from rugby.”

When Heather finally arrived at the bottom, there was the after-shock. “It was like someone had hit me over the head with saucepan and left me for dead – oh my God, that was horrific. I hated it.”

Yet she carried on. As a brakeman, her job was to check all the screws, make sure all the nuts and bolts were tight, but often the climate didn’t help. “I was so crap at it,” she admits. “My fingers were always so cold.”

Heather pushed on in every sense, always improving, adapting to her new sport – and being competitive too, as the side would often medal. Whereas with sevens rugby, her true sporting love, Heather had enjoyed the consistency of 14 minutes of solid action, the stop-start nature of bobsleigh did prove tricky. “You have to be high to get yourself on that track,” she says. “To throw yourself down that ice at 90mph on a race day, just with Lycra and a burns vest on, you have to be a bit mental. So when you’re there waiting for the light to go green you have to build yourself up to this place where you’re angry and aggressive.”

Going from that high to come down for a few hours, then getting back yourself up again, forced Heather to try alternative methods. “I was known as the crazy rugby girl as I’d always warm up with a ball in my hands. I had to learn to switch on and off, and having a rugby ball in my hands always switched me on.” 

After a competition in St Moritz, Heather’s bobsleigh career came to an end. “I was sent home because I was burnt out,” she says. “I always felt so uncertain of the future, I was living away from home six months of the year, and while I was probably earning £25,000, which isn’t bad, I was really reliant on sponsors.” 

Taking six months off all training as she went home to her parents, Heather decided to try a ‘normal life’. “I went to get a job as a teacher, and lasted about a week,” she says. “I ended up in a maths classroom in a Birmingham school doing supply teaching – I didn’t have a clue what I was doing so figured I’d just look assertive and it would be okay. But it wasn’t, it was crap, so I figured ‘nah, if this is the normal world, then get me out of here’.”

A normal life isn’t something Heather has ever really been used to. Every step of a hugely successful rugby career, that has taken in world cups at both sevens and fifteens, Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games, has had challenges that go beyond those in the gym or on the pitch. 

When Heather called time on her bobsleigh career more than ten years ago, a timely call from Simon Amor – who had kept her number to hand for the entire three years – took her back into the England set-up with a view to the inaugural women’s Rugby World Cup sevens in 2009. Fully focused on training and playing in the abridged game, Heather was back where she felt most at home. 

During our interview, she continually references her challenges with the 15-a-side game contrasting with her deep love of sevens.  

Yet, just as things started to take off on the pitch, another serious issue arose. “We were doing a video analysis session and Simon stopped the video above a scrum and there was a bald patch on the top of my head.” 

A year later, in 2010, her hair started, ‘coming out in clumps’. “I noticed it in the gym because I always used to run my hands through my hair, and there was always hair on my hands,” she says. “I knew it was falling out, but I didn’t think I’d lose all of my hair.

“I’d wake up in the morning and there’d be loads of hair on my pillow, that was stress in itself. Whenever I woke up, I wouldn’t be thinking, ‘the sun’s out, what a great day, what have I got on?’, I’d just look at the pillow straight away to see what hair I’d lost. 

“Every morning more and more was coming out,” she continued. “I never knew alopecia existed, I didn’t even know it had a name, I just knew I was losing my hair.”

It was in a training camp for the fifteens 2010 Rugby World Cup that a team-mate helped Heather face the issue. “I went into the meeting room and my mate Nolli [Danielle Waterman], ‘Fish, your hair, we need to shave it off’. 

“It was like I had a comb over,” she recalls. “I can laugh at it now, but I was so scared about shaving bits off in case they didn’t come back. I was trying to hold on to every strand I had and just trying to comb over the patches. That afternoon we walked back to base and shaved it off. I burst into tears.”

Dealing with her new look then provided a completely different challenge. “I couldn’t really identify myself,” she says. “I’d walk past a shop window and wouldn’t resonate with the person I saw. 

“I was too embarrassed to go out of the house without a hat on for two to three years, I wouldn’t do any interviews without a bandana on. I played without anything, but that was the only time.

“I also stopping going out with mates because it didn’t feel right, I didn’t look right. I couldn’t find an outfit that worked when you’re muscular and got a bald head, it just didn’t feel attractive. 

“You have days when you feel so ugly because you’re stared at, or looked at for a split second too long.”

To make matters worse, the hair loss still didn’t stop. “I’d only ever lost head hair in 2010, but when I broke my back playing fifteens, I lost my eyebrows and, more recently, I lost my eyelashes as well, which is really tough because of the weather.

“I lost body hair too and although my hair will grow back in patches, it looks worse than when it’s all gone, because it looks so patchy. “I’ve gone down the wig front, but it’s just not me,” she says. “I’ve got a great wig sitting at home, but it makes you feel like you’re hiding what you are and the reality of the situation.

“For a guy to lose their hair people don’t look twice, but until I went to an alopecia conference, I’d never even seen bald females. 

“There isn’t a minute of any day that goes past when I don’t think about it, it’s literally in my head the whole time,” she admits. “But I won’t let it define me.”

Alopecia wasn’t the first major challenge Heather faced. Growing up in the Midlands, her competitive nature meant she was always destined to become an athlete of some sort. “I used to take myself off on my bike, with a pound in my shoes in case I got lost, and just rode as far as I could and then timed myself to get back faster than when I got there.

“I’d do karate, kickboxing, martial arts, rowing, literally anything – I got banned from netball for elbowing people – but knew I could be at the top of a game, I just didn’t know what game.”

When her parents went through a divorce, the fall out had a huge impact on Heather. 

“I had no contact with my father, brother and sister,” she says. “At first, they all came with Mum, but then my brother and sister went off to my dad, and it was me and my mum, who was my rock and still is now.

“I’ve got a great relationship with Dad now, but it’s taken years to build and as a kid you don’t understand it, you just think your dad has abandoned you.”

One of the few controllable aspects of Heather’s young teenage life was food, or at least the consumption of it. “Eating less was about trying to regain control of life and that led to anorexia,” she says. “I was nearly admitted into hospital on drips and every night after school it was either a psychologist or nutritionist and a weigh-in. I was about five and a half stone – just skin and bone.” 

Remarkably, her desire to be an athlete continued and even though her weight plummeted she still managed to train. “A nutritionist sat me down and asked, ‘what do you want to be when you’re older?’, I told him I wanted to be an athlete and he said, ‘You won’t be an athlete unless you eat’. And that was it. Sometimes it just takes one voice and it was his. I had no link, I didn’t know the guy, but all of a sudden I was interested in nutrition.”

As she battled back from anorexia, Heather’s mother remarried and it was her stepfather who introduced her to rugby – regularly passing a rugby ball around the garden with her. 

It was the start of a new sporting direction that would – via bobsleigh – take Heather to a Commonwealth Games bronze, 22 caps for the full England side, four Rugby World Cups (two at sevens, two at fifteens, including one win), and even an appearance at the Olympic Games). 

When she talks of all the success, despite being part of England’s 2014 Rugby World Cup winning squad, it’s a more recent triumph that she calls a highlight. “I’ve been part of two (fifteens) world cups, one where I was at my best but broke my hand in the semi-final, and then 2014 where I’d come back from breaking my knee, but I wasn’t at my best. I still played a few games, but I just wasn’t where I wanted to be. Out of the medals I’ve got, the world cup probably isn’t my favourite.

“I’d say the European sevens title we won last year is one of my favourites,” she says. “It never used to be really competitive, but it’s tough now, and those players I played alongside I had so much respect for – they had so much dog in them, the right attitude, I just felt proud to be alongside them. And that side won the Commonwealth Games bronze and I just remember walking out of the tunnel at the back of the squad and just thinking what great players I had alongside me and being so comfortable around my squad mates.”  

After the Commonwealth Games, Heather struggled. She’d had glandular fever leading into the tournament, powered herself through it ‘with caffeine and sugar’ and then pushed on to the sevens Rugby World Cup later that year. “After the world cup I tried to have time out, but there wasn’t enough time and I just couldn’t fire. I spent weeks, days, months, and every day I was in tears and just kept crying, I didn’t really know why. 

“There was no reason to be in tears – to feel so stressed or so down – but I felt in such a hole that something had to change, I’d go for a run and not be able to carry on and break down – it was mental over physical. 

“Then I almost ran away from my set-up with England,” explains Heather, who is contracted to England with a view to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. “I phoned James [Bailey, England head coach] to say, ‘I’m done’,” she continues. 

Never stopping training, Heather always knew her body was up to it, but the mind was another thing. 

Locked into a full-time professional contract with England meant that taking a break didn’t seem, to Heather at least, to be an option. “Simon [Amor] said, ‘what do you need?’ ‘I need time out, I feel exhausted, and I’m making this call because I don’t know any females who have just taken time out’.

“If there was any opportunity to take time out then I’d rather do that, I’ve never been here before,” says Heather of her predicament. “Contracted females are a pretty new environment and it wasn’t like I could look at a female and say, ‘oh they took time out and came back’. Am I allowed to do that? Where are the boundaries? I don’t want to take the piss. But he just said, ‘go and have time out then’. It was music to my ears, it felt like someone had taken all the weight off my shoulders.”

Leaving no stone unturned to kickstart her mental state, Heather had been offered a place on the TV show Celebrity SAS before and always turned it down. This time, with a hiatus set until at least Christmas, she decided to give it ago. “I think for me it was more about an opportunity,” she says. “In all of this that’s happened in the last five or six months I’ve been worried about my transition out of the game.

“I don’t think there’s enough support out there for a female transitioning out of the game – it’s really fucking tough, it’s a worry time, because my career is in the latter stages and what the hell am I going to do? Where’s my income going to come from? When am I going to own my house? When am I going to do this? Where do I start?”

Admittedly, she says, Heather went into Celebrity SAS  ‘completely blind’ having never watched the show before. “When you go for interview, they asked you, ‘how would you feel if someone put a bag over your head? Or a gun to your head? Or you had dogs barking at your face?’. Well, how was I supposed to know, I’d never been in the situation. I might have done bobsleighing and rugby but other than that I’ve had quite a sheltered life.”

When she found herself on the edge of cliffs, monkey-bar-ing across ravines or walking down walls vertically, Heather soon discovered she had a fear of heights, among other things. “It was fricking awful,” she says. “I struggled with the lack of food and sleep, especially when they had me trying to play rugby – one on one – in thick mud up to your knees fighting over a tyre against Ben Foden. It was crazy shit.

“There was one challenge which was a two versus one fight and when they’re on the floor you have to finish them off,” continues Heather. “That was really tough because you had to physically hurt someone when they’re on the floor. Your human brain is going, ‘they’re on the floor now I want to stop’ and you have to carry on. Oh my God, that brought me to tears. As much as I’m aggressive on the field, I’m not off the field, I wouldn’t choose to fight, I wouldn’t choose to do that.”

After returning from the show, Heather then attempted a rare foray into 15-a-side rugby with Gloucester-Hartpury, but it lasted only two games. “It frustrated me more,” she admits. “I didn’t want to play club fifteens, I wanted to play sevens, I just wasn’t in the right mentality to be at my best. I dipped my toes in and just found it a bit muddy.”

Clarity started to emerge via sevens appearances with invitational invites. The first to Barbados was worse than she expected. “I just had no fire in my belly, if someone ran past me I didn’t really care – I didn’t want to fend someone off, I’d rather have a cuddle. I wasn’t there.” 

But the second, in Fiji, saw Heather meet some of the country’s Olympic Gold winners and the legendary Waisale Serevi. “I spoke to Serevi, we had some real conversations,” says Heather. “He said he’d played in a world cup when he was 37 and told me that you sometimes had to train differently to the younger players. 

“I think I’d been trying to find recovery so much and keep up with what everyone else was doing but because my engine had been going so long as an athlete it was almost on shutdown. I’d go for a run and I’d be in tears running because I couldn’t do it.”

Heather finally returned to the England camp. “I’ve overcome so many different things, and I’ve always had this expectation that I’m going to go again and again. I pride myself on being strong, but sometimes when you have to ‘go again’, it’s a bit like ‘for fuck’s sake’.”

That said, with Tokyo 2020 still in her sights, she will ‘go again’. “It’s unfinished business,” she says. “I’ve had a great career, a long career, and so many people have been with me, I feel like I represent them too – friends, family, physios patching me back together – so I owe it to them to give it everything and try and finish on my terms.”

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Ben McDade

This article was taken from issue 6 of Rugby.
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