Be it Chris Hemsworth scaling a 100 ft rope climb or the Ukrainian Paralympic team winning 29 medals while their country is invaded by Russia, the worlds of entertainment and sport have thrown up no shortage of compelling fitness stories in 2022. We’re not just talking about people winning some nice shiny trophies, either, but long-time champions ending iconic careers, wins for democracy and fairness, reckonings with mortality and an impassioned case for just taking life that bit easier. So, forget the World Cup for now, and dive in to our celebration of the athletes, sportspeople and celebrities who have inspired us in 2022 and can help you set fitness goals for 2023.
Possibly the greatest athlete ever announced her retirement this year at 41. Over a 27-year pro career she won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the second-most of all time, holds the records for the most women's singles matches won at majors (367!), is a five-time winner of the WTA Tour Championships in the singles division, is one of only two tennis players in history to win four Olympic gold medals (the other player is her sister, Venus) and is the only player, male or female, to accomplish a Career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles. Through it all she’s courted controversy and discrimination, and she’s appeared in a Beyonce video and The Simpsons. Game, set and match.
The lesson: Use your losses
“I don't like to lose – at anything – yet I've grown most not from victories, but setbacks."
The German motorsports giant also announced his retirement this year, at 35. In a decade and a half, Vettel had driven for the best teams in the game, including Red Bull, Ferrari and Aston Martin, racking up 122 podiums from 299 starts. With 53 wins and four consecutive championships (2010-2013), Vettel proved himself a once-in-a-generation talent and earned him numerous comparisons to the F1 GOAT, Michael Schumacher. He’s a nice guy off the track too; when he isn’t helping Austrian children build hotels for bees (seriously, look it up), he’s picking up litter at the British Grand Prix. Hopefully his post-racing career is a bit more lively than litter picking but honestly, if that were his next move, we’d be into it.
The lesson: Remember what matters
“At the end of your life, it's friendships, emotions and thoughts that you take with you, rather than what's in your bank account."
An advocate of the laid-back Malibu surf life, Hill has long since transcended his teen comedy roots to become one of Hollywood's more thoughtful figures. We’ve already expounded the benefits of hitting the waves, but it’s on the mental side of fitness that Hill has really shone this year. He released Stutz, a groundbreaking Netflix documentary showing him in conversation with his therapist. GQ's Lucy Ford called it an “antidote to social media self-therapising”, and it inspired the rest of us to pay as much attention to our emotional health as our physical fitness.
The lesson: Make time
“I’m still a workaholic. I still write and direct and get all my projects in order and stuff. But then I also surf every day. I make myself surf every day. I don’t know if dropping out is kind of the accurate word, but I kind of dropped out a little bit. I still love my creativity and my work,” Hill told Adam McKay last year. “But I definitely live a very quiet lifestyle, where I surf, hang with my dog, hang with my nephews. Just keep it mellow.”
What’s the most marathons you’ve ever run in a row? If you’re anything like us the answer is possibly “one” or more likely “zero”. Well, 32 year-old Australian Erchana Murray-Bartlett doesn’t have time for your amateur numbers; she’s currently attempting to run 150 back-to-back and at the time of writing has already hit 104, just three shy of the Guinness World Record. The aim is to run the 6,200km from the top of mainland Australia to the bottom to raise money for at-risk wildlife. Sports activism at its best, and most exhausting.
The lesson: Find your motivation
“I've never felt more motivated to reach a goal like this before,” Murray wrote in late November. “99 days ago this was nothing but a dream. But here, on what feels like Christmas Eve, I can practically taste it.”
Yes, Thor Love and Thunder was a washout, but Natalie Portman’s arms certainly were not. Returning to take on the mantle of Mighty Thor, Portman took up the hammer (curls) and smashed the physicality of the role. In a landscape where we’re obsessed with male actors bulking up or losing weight, it was nice to see Portman getting the credit she deserves for throwing down with – and if we’re being honest, beating – the boys.
The lesson: Overtraining is not the way to a godly physique
“Natalie needed to be agile and strong in other areas of her body to complete some of the stunt scenes well and stay injury free,” her PT Naomi Pendergast explains. “The key with any strength training program is to make sure you feel great in the body after every session.”
Paddy the Baddy might grab more headlines, but our Men of the Year honouree captured hearts and minds after coming from nowhere to cause one of the biggest upsets in MMA history. Nice guy, too. After he won the first thing he did was call his mum and have a cry.
The lesson: Believe in yourself
“Everyone was doubting me saying ‘Well, no one else has done it, so why are you going to do it?” Edwards says of his fight against Kamaru Usman. “I kept saying ‘Listen, I’m going to beat him.’ But we had to go out there and prove it.”
A month after Russia invaded their country, Ukraine’s Winter Paralympic team came second in the Beijing Paralympics, bagging Ukraine’s best-ever performance with 29 medals. Now that’s how you send a message. With 20 athletes competing in two sports, just transporting them to Beijing from a country at war was a logistic nightmare, but all involved dug deep to get them there, with the team winning seven medals (three golds) on their first day of competition alone. The next time you're lying in bed dreaming up an excuse not to go to the gym today, think of these guys.
The lesson: Sport can be protest
“Sport is peace,” the team wrote in a statement online.
The don of long-distance running, Kipchoge has been chasing the elusive sub-two hour marathon for some time now. In fact, he did it in 2019, but as it wasn’t in an official race, it didn’t count. No matter, the 38-year-old Kenyan put his best foot forward in Berlin this year, beating his previous Berlin Marathon record by 30 seconds and crossing the finish line in 2:01:09, which is pretty damn fast. Surely it’s only a matter of time before Kipchoge further cements his reputation as possibly the greatest marathon runner that ever lived.
The lesson: Mind over matter
“Athletics is not so much about the legs. It's about the heart and mind,” Kipchoge claims.
Also returning for Thor 4 (go figure), Hemsworth’s latest outing saw him pile on the muscle to become a hulk of a superhero. Accusations of himboism followed. But, the actor’s new Nat Geo documentary proved he’s anything but as. Over the course of six episodes, he sought to push his physiology to the limits in the name of extending his health and life span. Then things got real, with a test revealing Hemsworth is eight to ten times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than the average person. A startling prognosis for anyone, let alone a 39-year-old man. As a result, Hemsworth announced he’d be spending more time with his family, in order to reassess what was really important. A sobering lesson for us all.
The lesson: The downtime is just as important
“If you look at Alzheimer’s prevention, the benefit of preventative steps is that it affects the rest of your life,” Hemsworth told Vanity Fair. “It’s all about sleep management, stress management, nutrition, movement, fitness. It’s all kind of the same tools that need to be applied in a consistent way.”
Britain’s favourite mumble-core actor proved there really was nothing he couldn’t do this year when he won not one but two Jiu Jitsu tournaments. A tidbit here: rumour has it that during the filming of the 2011 MMA film Warrior, Hardy’s character just performs brutal – and quick – K.O.s because Hardy struggled with the technical side of grappling. Over a decade later, at 45, clearly Hardy has levelled up. Be it Bond, more mumbling, or a run at a pro Jiu-Jitsu career, we can’t wait to see what’s next.
The lesson: A calm mind beats all
“The characters I've played have been mostly violent, and I'm so far from being violent or aggressive,” Hardy has said. “I spend a lot of time watching 'Fireman Sam' with my three-year-old son Louis."
