WHEN British Athletics announced recently which athletes were to be included on the funding list for the coming season, there was cause for celebration for two of the Sunday Herald’s ‘Six to Follow’. Zoey Clark was included in the funding pool for the first time while Sammi Kinghorn was promoted to Paralympic podium.

Clark has been rewarded for the part she played in the 4x400m relay team’s silver medal won at the World Championships in London this summer and having just completed her chemical engineering degree at the University of Aberdeen, the timing of the funding announcement could not have been better for the 23-year-old.

“I thought I would have a good chance but it was really nice to get confirmation,” she said. “Before this, all of my financial help came from the university so this will make a massive difference to me.”

Clark had made the decision to become a full-time athlete well before she won her world championship medal and admits the thought of having no income was daunting.

“Deciding to go full time at athletics was always a risk and it was pretty scary to think I might have been training full time with no financial support,” she said. “I'd saved up some money so I would have been able to support myself this year but that was never going be a long-lasting solution so if I hadn't got on funding I would, at some point, have had to think of some way to support myself financially.”

Since graduating, Clark has been having to get used to having plenty of time to rest between her training sessions which compared to rushing from lectures to the track to the library is a luxury. It has not been an entirely easy transition though.

“It has been difficult because my course at uni was pretty demanding and so I was used to being really busy so to now have time on my hands is quite a change and I don’t always know what to do with my spare time,” she said “I always want to be doing something so I have to tell myself that no, I need to rest and recover and that can be challenging. It's so difficult to do nothing and just rest - I'm trying to master it but it's taking a bit of getting used to. I'm still not used to being allowed to have a nap during the day - it feels like it shouldn't be ok to do that! But I do like being full time because it means that when I do a morning session, I can go home and rest properly which means I can recover well and feel really good for my next session.”

Kinghorn is now on the top level of funding as a result of her double gold medal-winning performance at the World Championships in the summer and she admits her promotion has added a little extra pressure going into next season.

“You know that to keep your funding, you really need to be on the podium and that’s a little bit scary,” the 21-year-old said. “But they obviously think you can do it or they wouldn't have you on podium funding. So that's an extra pressure, but I guess it’s good pressure.”

The positives of increased funding far outweigh the negatives though, and Kinghorn does now not have to take up offers that may have made her a bit of extra cash.

“I don't need to worry as much now about doing so many events and talks, which is what a lot of athletes do to try and make a little bit of extra money,” she said. “I can be a little more choosy about those things and that will help a lot because now I can make sure that I only do things that fit in with my training. And I can also go away on warm-weather training camps for longer – and that’s always a good thing.”