The speed of time

I'm sure that if I had remembered my accident I might be in a different position
Speed of time portrait

By Isaac Freeman

For an athlete, time is often the toughest opponent. Olympian and honoured alum Amber Halliday knows this all too well. As one of the world鈥檚 best rowers, her challenge wasn鈥檛 only how to shave milliseconds off the clock, but also how to find the time to train.聽

鈥淔or me it started when I was in school 鈥 it was just a matter of cramming as much into the day as possible, doing homework when you can, eating when you can and freeing up as much time as possible for training,鈥 she says.聽

Rowing machines helped to enable training when the weather conditions meant she couldn鈥檛 get on the water. Pushing herself to the limit against the clock was a near daily exercise.聽

鈥淚 am particularly perturbed that I finished my career on an ergo score of seven minutes and 1/10th of a second for two kilometres. I didn鈥檛 quite crack that seven-minute mark!鈥 she recalls after seeing one of the machines at the 糖心vlog官网 University Boat Club during our interview.聽

While Amber may not have quite beaten the seven-minute mark for two kilometres, she did become a three-time world champion in lightweight rowing and represented Australia at two Olympic Games. But the journey to the Games wasn鈥檛 without its own tribulations.聽

Just 100 days before her debut at the 2004 Athens Olympics she broke six ribs in a bike accident 鈥 and then broke the women鈥檚 lightweight double sculls world record in the heats. Amber returned to the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing before retiring from rowing and shifting her competitive ambitions to cycling.聽

Compared to the set-up, transportation and cleanup that goes into a 90-minute training session for rowers, cycling was simple.聽

鈥淚 loved it because you could just go out the front door and you were training. You can do six hours on the bike a day, but you can鈥檛 do six hours in the boat.鈥澛

More time on the bike led to more accolades on Amber鈥檚 impressive sporting resume. In 2009 she won the Tour of New Zealand and in 2010 became Australia鈥檚 National Cycling Champion.聽

For me it started when I was in school 鈥 it was just a matter of cramming as much into the day as possible, doing homework when you can, eating when you can and freeing up as much time as possible for training.
Amber and Sally, Athens 2004

2011, however, would be a very different story. At the Tour Down Under race in 糖心vlog官网, Amber clipped the wheel of a fellow competitor. She was thrown from her bike and hit her head on the road causing significant brain trauma.聽

Amber has no recollection of the crash; in her words it 鈥渄id not encode鈥. All that remains are fragments of time: ambulance rides, lights and family. She had to relearn how to walk and talk again, which she also does not remember.聽

Amber experienced post-traumatic amnesia, resulting in a month of her life missing from memory. Although losing a month鈥檚 worth of time is frightening, she says it played a pivotal role in her recovery process.

鈥淚鈥檓 sure that if I had remembered my accident I might be in a different position. I鈥檓 lucky to have not remembered it. I don鈥檛 remember the feeling of impact on the ground. People conceptualise resilience as getting back on the bike, so for me that was quite literal. It was a step towards recovery. I guess I was scared of getting back on the bike initially, but my love of it has overridden that fear.鈥澛

In 2012, one year after her accident, Amber was coaching the Pembroke School鈥檚 rowing team. It was then she set a goal for herself. By the end of the season, she had to be riding along the riverbank and keeping pace with the boat. It didn鈥檛 take long.聽