The speed of time

By Isaac Freeman

For an athlete, time is often the toughest opponent. Olympian and honoured alum Amber Halliday knows this all too well. As one of the world’s best rowers, her challenge wasn’t only how to shave milliseconds off the clock, but also how to find the time to train. 

“For me it started when I was in school – it was just a matter of cramming as much into the day as possible, doing homework when you can, eating when you can and freeing up as much time as possible for training,” she says. 

Rowing machines helped to enable training when the weather conditions meant she couldn’t get on the water. Pushing herself to the limit against the clock was a near daily exercise. 

“I am particularly perturbed that I finished my career on an ergo score of seven minutes and 1/10th of a second for two kilometres. I didn’t quite crack that seven-minute mark!” she recalls after seeing one of the machines at the Adelaide University Boat Club during our interview. 

While Amber may not have quite beaten the seven-minute mark for two kilometres, she did become a three-time world champion in lightweight rowing and represented Australia at two Olympic Games. But the journey to the Games wasn’t without its own tribulations. 

Just 100 days before her debut at the 2004 Athens Olympics she broke six ribs in a bike accident – and then broke the women’s lightweight double sculls world record in the heats. Amber returned to the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing before retiring from rowing and shifting her competitive ambitions to cycling. 

Compared to the set-up, transportation and cleanup that goes into a 90-minute training session for rowers, cycling was simple. 

“I loved it because you could just go out the front door and you were training. You can do six hours on the bike a day, but you can’t do six hours in the boat.” 

More time on the bike led to more accolades on Amber’s impressive sporting resume. In 2009 she won the Tour of New Zealand and in 2010 became Australia’s National Cycling Champion. 

For me it started when I was in school – it was just a matter of cramming as much into the day as possible, doing homework when you can, eating when you can and freeing up as much time as possible for training.

2011, however, would be a very different story. At the Tour Down Under race in Adelaide, Amber clipped the wheel of a fellow competitor. She was thrown from her bike and hit her head on the road causing significant brain trauma. 

Amber has no recollection of the crash; in her words it “did not encode”. All that remains are fragments of time: ambulance rides, lights and family. She had to relearn how to walk and talk again, which she also does not remember. 

Amber experienced post-traumatic amnesia, resulting in a month of her life missing from memory. Although losing a month’s worth of time is frightening, she says it played a pivotal role in her recovery process.

“I’m sure that if I had remembered my accident I might be in a different position. I’m lucky to have not remembered it. I don’t remember the feeling of impact on the ground. People conceptualise resilience as getting back on the bike, so for me that was quite literal. It was a step towards recovery. I guess I was scared of getting back on the bike initially, but my love of it has overridden that fear.” 

In 2012, one year after her accident, Amber was coaching the Pembroke School’s rowing team. It was then she set a goal for herself. By the end of the season, she had to be riding along the riverbank and keeping pace with the boat. It didn’t take long. 

Her future goals stretched beyond cycling and coaching, however. Post-accident, Amber returned to University, completing a Bachelor of Health Science (Hons) in 2014 and gaining her PhD in Psychology in 2019, at the same time as having a baby – her son, Monty – while living abroad in Utah. 

Amber now works in the Office for Early Childhood Development and also runs her own business, SheThrivesInSport, as a resilience, performance and wellbeing consultant. Last November her many achievements were recognised by the University when she was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Contribution in Sports Award at the Distinguished Alumni Awards. 

Amber now consistently cycles to work, and occasionally “slowly” up to Norton Summit on her mountain bike. In her free time, she no longer feels the pressure to train as intensely as she once did, instead opting to spend quality time with her loved ones. "Now it is all about spending valuable time with my son, my husband, and my family," she says. 

As the interview concludes at her old stomping ground at the Adelaide University Boat Club, a young man enters the gym. He looks at Amber quizzically before she explains what she’s doing there. 

Amber begins to head down the stairs as he sees her picture on the wall adorned in the green and gold. After a double take, he says, “Wait that’s you?” 

“Yep, that’s me,” says Amber with a smile. 

Amber Halliday is a two-time Olympian, two-time world record holder, three-time world rowing champion, national rowing champion, Tour of New Zealand winner and South Australian sports star of the year.

Main photos of Amber at the Adelaide University Boat Club by Isaac Freeman, Lumen Photographic Editor.