BBC Olympics presenter Jeanette Kwakye MBE says she’s enjoying “spearheading as a black, dark skinned woman” in sports broadcasting.
“I didn’t have anyone to look at in sports broadcasting as a black woman growing up. And I take that responsibility – I carry that,” says the 41-year-old retired sprinter.
“Other young black women who are trying to step into this space, they want to talk to me about it. Sometimes being black, it offends people – just being on the television screen. You cannot let that get to you.”
Kwakye was a five-time British champion over 100m and competed in the Beijing Olympics in 2008, before retiring soon after not making London 2012 due to injury.
Since then she’s become a regular face in BBC sports broadcasting – most notably anchoring the coverage of Paris 2024, she’s lead Channel 5’s boxing coverage and co-presents ITV’s The Martin Lewis Money Show. Last month she took on co-hosting the BBC Radio 5 Live Weekend Breakfast, alongside Eleanor Oldroyd and Gordon Smart.
You’d never guess that she was once told by a TV exec that there was ‘no way’ she would become a broadcaster. “I’ll never forget that conversation, because I was in a really weird place, I’d had a terrible time with London 2012, having been injured just before the games, I was thinking about a new career and I was so excited to talk to this exec – and they completely shot me down.
“I thought, this is where your feet can’t do the talking, you’re going to have to do something a little bit different,” she says. “My husband [Tokunbo] said, ‘Don’t worry about him, we’re just going to go around the back door’.”
Kwakye has an ‘energy’ where she believes she can “at least try and do something”, she says. “I’m so glad I did [try]. I did that regardless of what people thought, and that makes me a little bit proud of myself.”
Never putting a ceiling on ambition is something she’s instilling in her two children, a son aged nine and a daughter, five, too. “I always say to them, if you tell somebody what you want to do when you’re older and they don’t laugh then that’s not big enough. I almost want my kids to be audacious with it!
“My little girl is obsessed with singing, [and says] I want to be Beyonce, and I’m like, ‘You’re going to be Beyonce!’ And even if she isn’t, I’ve given her the confidence to believe she can go out there and at least try.”
She’s “too busy”, she says, to take any notice of negative feedback. “It’s having the confidence within yourself to know you’ve done the best possible job. Because there’s going to be days you’re going to come off air and be like,’ Oh my God, that was a disaster’ and actually some of the criticism you might get is absolutely warranted. So I give myself grace, too.”
Thankfully, Kwakye says she’s already a morning person, which is especially handy given she needs to wake up at 3:15am to start her new BBC Radio 5 Live job at 4:30am on Saturdays and Sundays. “I’m always up,” she laughs, “I have two young children. Basically I’m not going to sleep for the next 20 years, I’ve just resigned myself to that fact – this is how I exist now.”
Her dedication to fitness helps her juggle everything. Thanks to years as a professional athlete, exercise is “second nature” to her, she says. “In our household, with my kids and my husband, fitness is very much ingrained in everything we do. We understand that without it, we really struggle, we need it to be able to function and to feel good about ourselves as a family.”
The East London-based mum-of-two fits in a workout after the school drop off. “It’s very rare that you’ll catch me training past midday – like impossible – because I just need to set up my day.”
She typically spends an hour in her home gym, using a combination of cardio, weight and resistance training – which she’s been “focussing quite heavily on for about five years”, particularly because she’s conscious of muscle mass declining as we get older.
“What I tend to find that weight and resistance training [helps improve] is posture. A lot of the time I’m so active with work, stood up for a number of hours, you have to have the strength to be able to do it. Also I’m able to regulate my weight, because of the hormones that are created, controlled and regulated during weight training.
“So many women are scared of weight training and resistance training. They think they’re going to get too bulky, but that is not the case – we don’t do anywhere near enough.”
Despite being a pro athlete for many years, you’ll never catch her running a 5km though. “As an athlete, I didn’t run anything over 400 metres! I know my limitations – running that distance isn’t for me, but sprint training intervals is something that I love, It’s so beneficial, and complements the resistance training too.”
As a family, they’ve found that limiting screen time really helps everyone’s wellbeing. “We try and ram home – especially for our kids to see – a little bit of mindfulness. Everything is so chaotic [so] it’s just nice to sit still for a bit,” she says about enforcing a TV ban for their kids for a short period. “Just as a little bit of a test to see if they could do it, and they did it – they were brilliant.
“It was fascinating to see – knowing they had the challenge of no screens or TV – what they would then go and do. They basically did things that we did in the Eighties or Nineties – stripping it back to basics. I can already see the change in their behaviour.”
She needs alone time too – it’s “self care”, Kwakye says. “As a married couple, we know that we obviously complement each other well, we work so well together, but we love to be alone. And not to feel guilty about it.
“It’s taken a while for us to get to that place, but it allows us to do really well as individuals, and then in turn, that makes us better as a couple, which makes us better for kids.”
Jeanette Kwakye co-hosts the BBC Radio 5 Live Weekend Breakfast programme alongside Eleanor Oldroyd on Saturdays from 6am and Gordon Smart on Sundays from 7am.
