Wolverhampton's Olympic champion Denise Lewis at 52: 'I feel ageless, it's a really special place to be'

"I've heard this so much in my career about relatability; 'You can't be on a front cover because you're not that relatable', 'Your muscles aren't relatable'," says the 52-year-old, who stepped down as a BBC sports pundit last year after 15 years. 

"It's that whole softening the edges and that definition of what beauty is supposed to look like - or what capability looks like - whether you're competent at your job because you look a certain way." 

Lewis, who grew up in Pendeford, Wolverhampton, was the first British woman to take Olympic gold in the heptathlon, winning the event in Sydney 2000, and catapulted a wave of British female success in the sport - with Dame Jessica Ennis Hill and Katarina Johnson Thompson following. 

"There's a constant awareness, whether it's a woman in a boardroom, a woman of colour on television, you've got to step it up a bit," she says, of the intersectionality black women face. "If I mess it up it's far more impactful, far reaching and damaging for me and the next generation coming through. 

"There's definitely a feeling that I'm representing my community here and I need to be really good. Over the last few years, you've seen some of our male counterparts not behaving very well at all, and a quick 'sorry' seems to fix it. They still remain in positions of power, I just don't think that's afforded to women." 

Lewis, who attended Regis School in Pendeford and was granted he Freedom of Wolverhampton, retired from professional sport in 2005, after also becoming Commonwealth and European champion in the seven-discipline event, going on to have four children, her youngest at age 46. 

Now in her early 50s, she feels "ageless", and wants other women to embrace their power in mid-life too: "It's about stepping up and stepping out and being more visible and owning that 40s, 50s space. That whole feeling of being ageless, it's a really special place to be. 

"When you're in your 20s and 30s you worry so much about what it looks like to be older. I still hear it from 30-somethings, 'Oh gosh I can't believe I just turned 30', and I understand that because that's how I viewed 30, despite all my successes. It was always like, what does the next phase look like? 

"I started going into my 40s thinking, 'Not too bad, I feel OK', and then into my 50s like, 'Bloody hell, this is amazing!'" 

Lewis' new book, Adaptability, is a guide to shifting our mindsets and tackle life in a calmer, more resilient way, including practical exercises and Lewis' own experience. 

Heptathlon - made up of the 100m hurdles, 200m, 800m, long jump, high jump, shot put and javelin over two gruelling days of competition - is the ultimate training in being adaptable, of course. 

"The key to success in that event is being able to compartmentalise, regardless of elation or mass disappointment, you have to be able to move through those emotions quite quickly, otherwise you get stuck. And if you get stuck, it means that you ultimately don't get your best performance out of yourself," she says - skills helpful for life outside of athletics, too. 

Today, she feels "more capable and more robust" than her younger years. 

"I've been challenged, but I feel strong," she notes, but "I think strength lies in the vulnerability to know that things are going to happen, it's how you deal with that that becomes your superpower. 

"It's that inner confidence that I have, which is such a powerful thing to be able to own. Not feeling that you're having to compare yourself to others, that you're steadfast in your own thought processes and the decisions you make for yourself." 

Having a busy career around four children - aged from 22 to six - Lewis said she's trying to prioritise herself a little more these days. "The balance was slightly skewed in my previous decade. It was almost like I wanted to be a champion of everything; best mum in the world, trying to manage everything in the home, all the invisible jobs. Thinking I can do it all, just made me tired and more irritable. 

"It's important to compartmentalise. It's dealing with what you can do in that moment, delegate and not think you can do everything. It brought me to a better place, where I felt more in control and more forgiving of myself." 

When she was pregnant at 46, healthcare professionals named her a "geriatric mum" and warned her of everything she couldn't do, she says. "I was like, well, I'm probably fitter than most 30-year-olds so I'm not going to listen, I'm going to do me and be sensible, but I know I've got this." 

Much is spoken about the disadvantages of having a baby later, but Lewis says there have been many benefits. "I stress less. Things do happen but I'm much more measured, and I don't necessarily catastrophise, I don't panic." 

"I don't wish time away as much as I think I did in the early days. You want to get to the next phase, the next developmental phase. You don't always have to be in a rush, I allow myself to enjoy him more."  I have to say, it's been the best thing for me, that stillness that you get when you've got a newborn. It forces you to slow down and that was probably just what I needed at a time where I'd been really frantic and hectic." 

She takes great inspiration from her own mother, who raised Lewis alone after she was born in West Bromwich. "What I saw from her was a resilience in an environment that at that time was pretty hostile and challenging. In the Seventies, being a single parent was not seen as the norm," says Lewis, who herself became a single mum after having her oldest child, Lauryn, before meeting music mogul Steve Finan O'Connor and going on to have three boys. 

"I saw her just accept this was the position she was in, and help wasn't very forthcoming, and her own personal values shone through and her work ethic. At times she had two jobs to pay her way in life, she didn't want to have to rely on someone else. I have great admiration for my mum." 

It's all about mindset, Lewis believes, and we all have the power to change ours. "If you're feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed by a certain emotion, changing your environment, going for a walk, putting music on, and getting that control back for yourself can help. For me, personally, sometimes stillness is really good.”

"I know we have great capacity and a great ability to change our mindset. And because I've lived that, and I've done it for so many years of my life, I know I can rely on it, I know that when I'm going through a difficult patch, that I can take myself out of that. 

And "it's a deep trust in my instincts, and it's a deep trust to know that if I don't have the answers, I'm not going to suffer in silence, I'm going to seek help." 

Adaptability by Dame Denise Lewis is published by Piatkus, priced £25. Available on March 13 .