It is somewhat appropriate that Vicky Holland was at her parents’ home in Redmarley in the county of her birth when The Local Answer called.

The current women’s world triathlon champion has trained and competed all over the globe and won a stack of medals, but much of the groundwork for that success was done in her early years growing up in Gloucestershire.

Born in Gloucester, the now 32-year-old – she’ll be 33 on 12th January – is quick to pay tribute to those who did so much to help her in her swimming and running, work that enabled her to take on and ultimately conquer the world.

She learned her cycling – the third discipline of what must be one of the toughest events in sport – outside Gloucestershire but that doesn’t lessen one bit the sense of gratitude she has towards her home county.

It was swimming that was her first love.

“I started swimming at Newent with Newent Otters when I was six or seven,” she said. “I always loved the water and was very soon happy to be swimming without armbands.”

It was also clear fairly soon that she was a much better than average swimmer for her age.

“I progressed through the first levels quite quickly, it was something in which I was relatively natural,” she added.

In those early days her best stroke was backstroke, not the freestyle that she does in competition today.

“I don’t do much backstroke at all today,” she admitted, “maybe a bit to stretch my shoulders. I concentrate on freestyle because that’s what I need to do, that’s what drives me.”

Triathlon was a long, long way from her thoughts in the early to mid-90s of course, although her first swimming coach in Newent realised that the young Holland had that something extra in the pool.

“Carol Perry spotted that I was quite good,” said Holland. “She was quite a good swimmer herself and encouraged me to move to Gloucester City Swimming Club. They were a bigger club and allowed me more pool time.”

She made the move at the age of 10 and her first coach at her new club was Helen Stephens. They weren’t always easy times for the club around this period because the leisure centre – now GL1 – was undergoing a massive redevelopment and the swimming club were required to use other pools around the county.

“For three-and-a-half years we were based out of schools,” recalls Holland. “We’d be swimming in 25-yard pools and it was definitely a difficult period that Gloucester City went through.”

Graham Brookhouse, an Olympic Games bronze medal winner for Great Britain in the team modern pentathlon in 1988, oversaw the club’s return home and he was Holland’s coach for three years until the age of 18.

By now Holland was also a very proficient runner and Brookhouse, with all his years of competing at the highest level in the multi-discipline event in the 80s and 90s, certainly knew a talented athlete when he saw one.

He has a pretty impressive CV as a swimming coach too because as well as looking after Holland he also coached Jamie Cooke, who hails from Andoversford and was crowned modern pentathlon world champion in September.

The two former Gloucestershire school pupils – they both live in Bath now – speak very highly of Brookhouse and remain very much in touch with him today.

“Jamie and I swam together a bit at Gloucester even though there is five years between us,” said Holland. “There was a major reception held in our honour at Bath after we’d won our world titles, that was quite special.

“Graham had always seen the potential for me to go into triathlon, probably before I did. He was the first person who said I should go into it, he’s very supportive.”

When Holland left home to go off to Loughborough University she says her running was better than her swimming, although to be fair her swimming wasn’t too shabby.

“I started running when I was 10 but ran more and more when I was at Newent School,” she said.

And she didn’t have far to go if she needed any advice because her dad Freddie was a county standard steeplechaser back in the day.

“He coached me,” said Holland. “I started doing cross country, then Forest of Dean district and then county. I loved it, at home I used to run around a field outside our house and I’d run around the lanes where we lived.”

What with her swimming and her school work the young Holland clearly had plenty in her in-tray – as did dad Freddie and mum Frances of course!

But her parents realised that if her running was going to kick on she would be best served by joining one of the athletics clubs in the county.

“I needed the stimulation of running with other runners,” said Holland, “so I joined Cheltenham Harriers. I think I was 14 and having a running coach pushed me on.”

Her coach at Harriers was Andy Beadle and she certainly did push on because she went on to finish fifth in the England Schools’ cross country and won the England Schools’ 1,500 metres.

Those sort of performances – coupled with her swimming – don’t go unnoticed of course and she was getting calls from the head coach of British Triathlon even before she went to Loughborough.

So what was her reaction?

“I didn’t want to do it,” she said. “For the first six months while I was at university I was a member of the running club and a member of the swimming club.”

But then, as so often happens, fate intervened.

“In the Easter of 2005 I picked up an injury,” she explained. “I wasn’t funded by swimming and running and that’s when triathlon swooped.

“I went on a training camp and thought, ‘This is rather cool, I’ll give it a go’.”

Her cycling obviously needed some work – “I could ride a bike but I was never really that interested in cycling before,” she said – but since deciding to throw in her lot with triathlon she has never looked back.

She’s been an elite athlete ever since she left university and won medals at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games before being crowned champion of the world just a few short months ago.

Her major success has come in the last few years with 2014 being her real breakthrough year when she won bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

“I’d competed in the London Olympics in 2012,” she said. “That was an amazing experience with it being on home soil but I didn’t really perform.”

She finished 26th and said: “After that I was determined that I wanted to be competing for podiums, I wanted to be more than an also-ran.”

So she moved up to Leeds where she joined a training group that included the likes of the Brownlee brothers and Non Stanford.

“There was a very strong girl group and I loved it,” said Holland. “They were long hours and I wasn’t used to it but I thrived on it.”

So much so that despite picking up a foot injury in early 2014 she won that first major individual medal in Glasgow and then followed up by winning gold in the mixed triathlon team relay with the Browlee brothers – Alistair and Jonny – and Jodie Stimpson at the same Games.

“The injury in 2014 meant I had to reduce my training,” recalls Holland. “I’d horrendously overtrained and it gave me the chance to freshen up.

“I injured my plantar fascia so I just had to lower my run volume and manage it cautiously for a few months to get me through the Commonwealth Games. I actually then tore my plantar fascia three weeks after Glasgow and didn’t run again for five months while we worked on the chronic problems I had with my feet so the timing of that whole issue was very lucky for me really.

“I really out-performed myself to win that bronze medal, I wasn’t expected to win it. I did everything right on the day, it was a dream race.

“Looking back – and immediately after the race – I didn’t think I could have done any better on that day although as far as the future was concerned I knew I could go on to achieve more.”

And she was absolutely right because that race turned out just to be the start for Holland who was getting better and better with age.

She followed up that individual bronze in Scotland with another individual bronze, this time at the biggest Games of them all – the Olympics in Rio in 2016 – before being crowned world champion.

They are all huge achievements, of course, but finishing third in Brazil and becoming the first British woman to win an Olympic triathlon medal was something special.

“It’s so hard to get everything right on one day,” she said, “there are so many external factors that you can’t control. I wasn’t well on the day of the race and woke up at 4am so I went to the start just hoping for the best. I’m very, very proud of what I achieved that day.”

And she’s every bit as proud of her world title success two years later, particularly as that wasn’t her main target for 2018.

Unlike the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, becoming world champion requires you to perform in a series of events all over the world on a number of given days.

“I didn’t think that it was something that would suit me,” admitted Holland, “that’s why winning the title was so special.

“I’d always performed better at one-day events and my main target for 2018 was the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April.”

Unfortunately things didn’t go to plan Down Under and although she won a team silver she finished just outside the medals in the individual event.

“My aim was to win the race and to come fourth was really disappointing,” she admitted. “I just didn’t do myself justice.”

On the positive side – and it’s part of an elite athlete’s make-up to always find a positive side – she was by now in tip-top condition for the world triathlon series.

“I just kept getting good results,” said Holland. “All of a sudden I was in with a shout of winning the world title.”

And that crowning moment came on the Gold Coast less than four months ago when she held off the challenge of Kate Zaferes from the United States to take the title.

Along the way she’d won three races and finished second in two more so no one could say she didn’t deserve her success.

That success was all the more impressive because she’d been sidelined for much of 2017 through injury.

Triathlon is a tough, tough sport of course and injuries are very much part of it.

Holland had considered retirement in 2016 but said she’d thought she’d “carry on for two more years to see if she could still compete for podiums, if not I’d gracefully step aside”.

So how much longer does Holland, who these days is coached by her boyfriend and Bath Performance Centre head coach Rhys Davey, want to continue competing?

“I know I can’t go on forever,” she said. “Triathlon isn’t like golf, you can’t carry on until you are in your 50s and 60s.”

And while that is pretty clear, it’s equally clear that Holland has no intention of retiring just yet.

“2019 is all about Olympic qualification,” she said. “It’s full steam ahead trying to qualify, getting in good shape and then hopefully bring home some hardware in 2020.”

Not that Holland is taking anything for granted.

“It’s hard getting into the British team because we’ve got such strength in depth,” she continued. “We’ve got at least six girls who are good enough plus a few more so I’m not resting on my laurels.

“It’s far too early to be making predictions but I’m aiming for more medals. I’m driven by podium success at the top level and I want to win the gold medal in Tokyo.

“Come Tokyo I’ll be 34 if I get there. After that I’ll maybe have one more year, I’ll do no pressure races. I won’t be targeting another Games.

“It would be nice to finish on my own terms but I’m under no illusions because I’ve been on this crazy journey for 25 years.”

If she does make it to Japan – and there’s every reason to think that she will – it’s a fair bet that her parents will be there to see her bow out on the biggest stage.

They have been her biggest supporters from day one and it was they who set her on the road to such sporting success.

“I sometimes think at times my parents wish they’d never taken me to Newent Otters,” laughed Holland. “All the stress, the nervous times watching me.”

The stress and the nerves are understandable of course but they are nothing compared with the joy of seeing your daughter win medals on some of the biggest stages in world sport.

Vicky Holland has done that many times over and there’s every chance that there’s plenty more to come.