Feeney has ‘surprised’ herself in comeback from 11-year break

Career breaks for elite level athletes are often rare and looked at with caution. A stop in the consistent training, regular competition could mean the well oiled regimental machine of an athlete’s life will be even harder to get going again, but there are two sides to every coin.

Formula One great Michael Schumacher famously came back to race in 2010 after four years off but upon his return podiumed just once in that year, whereas American football star John Riggins sat out the 1980 season but then returned to the National Football League in 1981 to produce one of the best running back seasons for someone in their mid 30s ever for the Washington Redskins.

If anything, these oft called sabbaticals are more common amongst coaches with legendary football manager Pep Guardiola taking a year off between his high profile jobs at Barcelona and Bayern Munich and then another year in between his time in Germany and Manchester City.

Taking an 11-year hiatus from elite sport and returning to active participation though is unheard of which makes Alexandra ‘Lexie’ Feeney quite the anomaly. 

“I was surprised at how much I did remember in terms of my technical form, but I was equally surprised at how long it took me to get back,” said Feeney, who picked up the bow again a couple of years ago after getting put in a moon boot from ultimate frisbee, a popular university sport in her native Australia.

“I thought I’d be able to get out and easily shoot over 600 straight away and that took me a little while to get back in.” 

“At the time I was at a different workplace and there was less opportunity to train during the week other than shooting maybe three or four days a week,” she explained.

Now with other duties it seems there is even lesser time for Feeney to train compared to when she originally quit archery after its programme was cut from the Australian Institute of Sport following the 2010 Commonwealth Games. 

In addition to her full-time job in New South Wales’ department of education, the 35-year-old is the chair for the state’s Olympic archery delegation, the Archery Australia athletes commission and a coach at Newcastle City Archers and Gosford Coastal Archery.

Her hectic schedule means from five in the morning to seven in the evening, Feeney is constantly working or training every day.

She admitted herself to be someone that likes to keep busy, but to maximise her athletic potential as someone in now their mid-30s has meant the Lac La Biche 2024 World Archery Field Championships mixed team silver medallist is prioritising her health more than anything.

“I had the realisation early that I’m not as young as I was when I did this the first time and so injury prevention was really important to me.” 

“I had this realisation that if I hurt myself, if I get an over training injury, if I increase my load too much, that’s going to take me a really long time to recover from and so right throughout my comeback I’ve placed a lot of value on really good strength and conditioning.” 

“That’s been a really big part of my training as well, not just shooting arrows, but making sure that I’m strong and healthy.” 

Feeney was just 19 when she ranked 48th at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, reaching the Games being the pinnacle of her career, and although she made brief cameos in 2013 at a World Cup stage in Antalya and the Australian Open, and in 2017 when she tried compound in the Indoor World Cup stage in Las Vegas, she feels at the peak of her powers amidst her recurve return.

As well as silver success in Lac La Biche where she also narrowly lost in the women’s team bronze medal match, Sydney-born Feeney set a new national record for recurve women in Australia on 15 December with 668 points over 72 arrows, bettering the previous record by three.

She insisted she is not done yet though, and watching the past Olympic Games from the sidelines whilst back amongst the world’s best in the sport has whet Feeney’s appetite to qualify for LA28.

“There’s just something special about the Olympics, talking about it, I get goosebumps. One day I’m going to go back,” claimed the 2010 Australian Open Champion who was inspired by Simon Fairweather‘s home gold triumph in Sydney 2000.

“This time it was like my plan is in action and is the goal. As much as I really wanted to be in Paris, I think that having that extra time overall will set me up and put me in a better position leading into LA for a really good performance.”

“I just look back and go wow, I was still such a kid and having a lot more life experience now I feel like I can manage myself in terms of training, in terms of performance as well as on the line emotionally a lot better,” she added.

Therefore, Feeney’s time away from archery has not provided just a simple extended sabbatical but a period for her to grow as a human being.

Her love for the sport has now gone full circle.

From wanting to be like her idol Fairweather, Lexie Feeney now enjoys archery because it has become her “happy place” somewhere for her to enjoy the craft of archery, away from her already busy filled days and of course a motivation to be an Olympian once again, in what would be 20 years on from Beijing.