I joined the gym at 49 - and discovered a world-beating talent

Approaching 50, Anna Bailey turned to the gym to improve her physical and mental condition.

But to her amazement, she discovered she had the makings of a multiple world champion.

Anna talks to Life Changing's Dr Sian Williams about the profound moment she realised that she could be a world-beater.

In her 40s, Anna Bailey had cultivated a successful career in IT, but she was also struggling with her mental health.

Diagnosed with cyclothymic depression, a mild form of bipolar disorder, Anna would experience changing highs and lows in mood.

Anna’s sleep began to really suffer, the downs were longer and the ups were fewer. Anna’s marriage also ended.

“That knocked me for six," she says, "Even though it was my decision to do that, because it's always felt like a failure and I don't do failure.”

Anna decided she needed a change, and decided that getting into fitness could be a good option.

At 49 years old, Anna had never stepped into a gym before.

The staff showed her the equipment and talked her through some circuits with weights and exercises.

The running machine was a no-go. “You might think because I'm tall that I would be a runner,” says Anna, “but all the runners you see are thin.”

“The static bicycles, I tried those, but they're blooming uncomfortable… It's like sitting on a razor blade!"

Then she spotted the rowing machines.

“I'd never seen one and I'd never been on one. And I said to my instructor there, well, that looks a bit of fun. Can I have a go on one of those?”

The machine was an instant hit.

“They are non-impact, which is very nice. And they exercise the whole of your body, which is another nice thing.”

“I took to that much, much more. And so that became my weapon of choice for doing cardio work,” she says.

“It turned out that I was quite good.”

Her gym was running a competition - to do a 10k row in under a certain time.

There were winners for each gym branch, overall winners – male and female – and then a total overall winner.

“I won the one in our gym and then I won the overall female one, and was just pipped for the overall by a chap who won the men’s,” she says.

“I ended up with a free year’s subscription plus about 750 quid, which was very nice.”

Anna’s gym suggested she go in for competitions and advised her to talk to chap called Ricky.

“He was a nice young lad,” says Anna, “and he talked me into entering my first British Championships.”

Within a year of sitting on a rowing machine for the first time, Anna was heading off to compete on a national level - a month before her 50th birthday.

It was there that she got introduced to her coach, Ed. They began planning for the Worlds.

“We soon discovered, my technique was terrible,” Anna recalls. But Eddie suggested they shouldn’t try and change anything, with the competition only a month away.

Suddenly, Anna was part of a GB team that was heading out to the World Championships in Boston. Having only been rowing for a year, when she got there, she had no idea how she would perform.

“I didn't know any of the people that I might be competing against,” she recounts.

Anna came second.

“The person who beat me was somebody from Denmark who was very well known. She was part of their international rowing squad,” she states.

It felt life-changing, to go from somebody who was quite unfit, and suffering from low moods, to coming second in the World Championships.

“I was following in the footsteps of somebody who had got all the records, and so it was really my aim to attack all the records that she’d paved the way with ahead of me.”

Soon, Anna was holding a cluster of records all at once. She won the British Championships nine times. The Worlds five times. The Europeans, too.

“I can't remember how many,” she admits. “I don't remember a Europeans that I didn't win.”

Now aged 75, Anna has had to press pause on her rowing career.

"I have a lot of inner rage," she told Life Changing, "The carcass that I'm living in is letting me down."

“I have two replacement shoulders and a replacement hip," she says. "Unfortunately, genetics has given me arthritis.”

But Anna has far from given up: on one occasion, she entered the British Championships for the fun of it, knowing full well she would "come last".

It was a shock at first: "I was the only old codger sitting on a machine there," she says.

"The rest of them, bar one, were the British Girls squad, all fit and muscly and very fast. Faster than I'd ever been."

“They finished long before I did so I was finishing the race on my own.”

But it didn't matter if she had been slower: the squad were impressed with Anna's abilities.

“They had been listening to [the commentator] listing my achievements – which was embarrassing because I couldn't get away – but they sat on their machines and waited till I'd finished and the crowd were cheering me in.”

“I appreciated that more than anything really.”

Anna still thinks about how much her life was changed by that fateful decision to go to the gym.

"It's chance that I went to the gym," she says, "Chance I looked at the machine and said, yeah, I'll have a go on that. Chance that I was introduced to Eddie.”

But what isn't down to chance - and entirely down to hard work - is that Anna is featured in the Indoor Rowing Hall of Fame, along with the most decorated British Olympic rower of all time, Sir Steve Redgrave.

“I'm proud to be in that,” Anna says. “That's my claim to fame, that he knows who I am.”

You can listen to the full interview with Anna, and other stories like it, on Life Changing with Dr Sian Williams. Listen now on BBC Sounds.