She recalls being captivated by an old videotape, which showed her aunt winning the silver medal at the Junior World Championships a year before she was born. “It wasn’t even the Olympics, it was just the Junior World Championships,” she laughs. “But I loved it… I was just in awe of what the sport was.” Then and there, she became determined to have her own moment on the podium. “I said, ‘I want to do that. I want to go and beat her.’ I was really competitive.”
Her grandparents warned her that she would need to be able to swim 50 metres – so off she went to swimming lessons. Before long, she came back with a swimming badge, and her lessons began.
For the first few years, her grandfather served as her coach. “He was in the swimming pool with me, teaching me how to roll and do the basics.” Eventually, he took her to her first race. “It probably took me a very long time to do the course, but I was really happy that I’d done it. I came back with a little trophy,” she says, adding proudly, ‘I was the only girl competing in that race.”
For the young Woods, the sport soon became an outlet – an escape from what was becoming an increasingly unpleasant experience at school. “I wasn’t a huge fan of school,” she says. As she got better and stronger and braver in a kayak, her classmates became more and more cruel. “My physique changed. I started getting stronger, getting muscles in my arms, getting a bit of a six-pack,” she says. “Going through all that as a girl is different – I think it’s a bit more accepted nowadays, but it definitely wasn’t back then.”
Hopping into her boat became her “only way to release the energy that I had.” She adds, “I didn’t know how to process my emotions. I wasn’t very intelligent when it came to that side of things.” For a while, Woods was able to manage her mental health by throwing herself into the sport. But then, in 2015, it all changed. “It worked until the sport was taken away from me.”
While playing American football at university, Woods ruptured her ACL. The injury led to a serious operation and a lengthy recovery. “I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she confesses. “I kind of had this persona where I was really strong – I had put up this kind of image where I was never weak.”
With no outlet left, trapped in her student flat, Woods began self-harming. “It kind of became a bit of a routine, so that I could feel something. That was the outlet,” says Woods.
Eventually, her coach noticed what was happening and approached her. “Thankfully, he did,” she says. “He was the best person to do it.” She began the long road to recovery, seeing therapists, psychologists and doing two stints at the Priory, a mental health treatment centre. “I’m very thankful that all of that has made me who I am today. And thankfully, I’m not self-harming anymore.”