Despite entering Triathlon late, the Tadcaster-born triathlete Jessica Learmonth has quickly established herself in an exciting time for British Triathlon.
She said: “I did my first run in 2011, so I’m a latecomer. I just started like every other person doing a triathlon.
“My Dad used to do triathlons in the 1980s and then I think I might have been getting fat and thought, ‘I need to sort this out!’
“I got back into swimming because I had a big gap from it so I just gave it a go like most people do for a challenge, and it just snowballed.”
2015 was a breakthrough year for Jessica after her quitting her job as a personal trainer to take up triathlon full-time and now she can dream of bigger achievements.
Though she’s not getting ahead of herself, Jess admits going to a Commonwealth Games would be incredible as Team England count down to Gold Coast 2018.
She said: “I’m not sure about Gold Coast 2018 because we’ve got such a strong team. We’ve got some young bucks coming through and obviously there’s Jodie Stimpson, myself and Lucy Hall.
“With so many of us, it’s anyone’s I think so it’s a slight aim but I’m not too hung up on it. It would be amazing to go in a massive Games environment, so I’m going to keep going this season and see how I get on.
“It’s an extra motivation having these other girls around me, we love it. I couldn’t do it without them and the training is so difficult to be done on your own.
“With others, you always push yourself a bit harder and I think if we trained on our own we wouldn’t do as well, so we help each other out massively.”
Having come so far already in such a short amount of time, no one can rule Jess out. And she’s in no doubts about what it would mean to represent Team England.
She said: “It would be an absolutely massive achievement coming in so late to triathlon and being able to represent your country would be unbelievable so I’d love it.”