We’ll set the scene. An attractive, strong-looking blond woman is riding her triathlon bike through the English countryside. Now it’s time to cue the dramatic music. Mix in the sound of her breath as she pushes up a hill. The music builds. Then, suddenly, she comes to a stop and reaches behind her to pull her phone out of her cycling jersey. There’s a short conversation, then she turns her bike around and starts heading back to her car.
While I’m bringing some dramatic flair to all this, it really did happen to Captain Rosie Wild in 2020. That call? It was the powers that be letting her know that she was going to Afghanistan that night as part of the prestigious 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, which is part of the 16 Air Assault Brigade – the British Army’s Global Response Force – that is constantly “held at very high readiness to respond to crises worldwide,” according to the British Army’s own website.
That night Wild was on a plane to Kabul, helping with the evacuation as the US and its coalition partners evacuated people from the capital.
Considering her training, it was a unique and unforgettable experience.
“It was seeing the different side of humans,” Wild remembers. “It was seeing different side of the Taliban. It was very confusing environment for what we’ve all been trained to do, which was to fix a bayonet and stab the enemy that’s sitting in a trench. I mean, it was a harrowing experience, but I loved it because it just showed what our soldiers can do. Under that immense pressure, and even though their trained to fire their weapons, they were able to restrain and not do that, and to save people. It was pretty incredible.”
OK, I am guessing you’re asking what that “training” I referred to earlier is all about. Bayonets? Firing weapons?
Here’s how the British Army describes the 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team’s (BCT) core role: “to maintain and command the Air Manoeuvre Task Force (AMTF), comprising infantry and aviation battlegroups held at very high readiness to deploy anywhere in the world to carry out the full spectrum of missions, from non-combatant evacuation operations to war fighting … It is at the forefront of developing interoperability with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and the French Army’s 11e Brigade Parachutiste.”
It doesn’t get much more elite in the British Army than being part of the BCT. And, at the time of that deployment in 2022 to Afghanistan, Wild was the one and only woman who had ever managed to pass the gruelling Parachute Regiment’s selection test to earn the coveted maroon beret worn by the soldiers in the elite division. Others had tried since women were allowed to apply for the course in the 1990s, but none had passed. Heck, only 27 per cent of the men who take on the course make it through the five-day course.
Along the way Wild had to pass a number of physical tests, carrying 35 pounds on her back along with water and her rifle, all while wearing a helmet and combat jacket. She had to cover two miles with all that in less than 18 minutes. She had to cover 20 miles in under four and a half hours. She had to work with a team to carry a 175-pound stretcher over five miles. Another team event included carrying a 132-pound log over 1.9 miles of rough terrain. There was a 1.8-mile obstacle and assault course that had to be completed in under 19 minutes.
“So, physically it is designed to really batter you,” Wild remembers. “It’s lots of stuff with heavy weight on your back. It’s very fast stuff, so it’s not long hours and hours and hours of marching. It’s fast. And there’s a variety of tests in it, including log races, stretcher races.”
Then there’s the milling.
“The 5ft 5in Royal Artillery officer was going toe-to-toe with a male opponent in one of the British Army’s most brutal challenges – a minute-long, no-holds-barred boxing match known as ‘milling,’” is how the Daily Mail’s Mark Nicol described that part of the test. “Within seconds, a barrage of blows to the face sent Rosie to the floor. But determined not to let months of arduous training go to waste, she leapt to her feet, furiously fighting back and – to her amazement – was declared the winner when the 60 second bout was over.”
“You’re in a boxing ring and you fight someone, but you’re not allowed to defend yourself,” Wild says when I ask her to explain this crazy-sounding test. “You’ve just got to take the punches … It’s to do with your mindset. It’s to do with being able to control when you’re seeing red and hit people, and be hit, and carry on and move through.”
Sure. That makes total sense.
“It sounds real sick and strange, but it’s the same test that they’ve been doing for 50 years,” Wild continues. “The standards haven’t changed. It was really physically difficult, but I did thrive with that and I loved it. I actually found it more psychologically difficult, and I think I built a lot of mental resilience from that.”
You think?
So, what has all this got to do with triathlon, you’re asking? Well in addition to being a “trailblazer” (as Brigadier John Clark, the commander of the 16 Air Assault Brigade described Wild after she passed the gruelling test), Captain Rosie Wild also happens to be a triathlete. A really good triathlete. So good, in fact, that the Army is supporting her for a year as she competes as a pro triathlete. In just her second race as a pro, Wild finished fourth at Ironman Lanzarote.
“I thought I’d be the weakest competitor,” she says, “But where I knew I had strength over a lot of people was I had a lot of mental resilience that I’ve built up in the army.
So, I thought if it’s a windy day, if it’s a really hot day, I know that I can just zone out and crack on through it.”
Wild has a point, I guess – even the toughest hills on the Ironman Lanzarote course must be less painful than getting hit in the face, right? For Wild, though, there are aspects of competing in a triathlon that are much more challenging.
“I think because in your military training a lot of the stuff you’re taught is you just do it,” she says. “You learn to do stuff almost without thinking. It’s reflexes. It’s how we’ve trained. We train these responses so much that you just do it without thinking, so that they know when you’re in an awful position and you might have to do that with an enemy, you know, your training will kick in.
Whereas, when your in your own head for five and a half or six hours, climbing Mirador del Rio or, on the lava fields – that’s just you versus yourself. That’s your own self talk there. I can’t kick right into military training … It was, ‘this is you, this is you and yourself Rosie. You’ve got to get yourself through this.’ You can you can choose to push or you can choose to crumble.”
Wild would eventually finish fourth in Lanzarote. While many might be frustrated at finishing one spot off the podium, the 32-year-old was thrilled. Thanks to winner Anne Haug having already qualified, and third-place finisher Lydia Dant passing up on her qualifying slot for Nice, Wild managed to earn a pro slot for the Ironman World Championship in Nice this September.
Success is hardly new for Rosie Wild, but it’s not as though she hasn’t worked for it. She was awarded the prestigious Sword of Honour at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, which is “given to the best cadet of the intake,” according to the BBC. She grew up watching her father, who also served in the Army, get up and go running every morning, so it seemed natural to follow suit.
“I’ve never struggled with motivation or getting up in the morning and going, getting something done and I’ve always been very competitive with myself,” she says. “I’m not really a team sport person. I don’t mind if we win or lose. I’m really just happy just to do the best I can do. So, I find it easier to be competitive with myself.”
Four knee surgeries sidelined Wild for a time, but just before she started her military training, she did her first triathlon. That was followed by a three-year hiatus, but then in 2019, during a two-week leave while she was deployed on a United Nations mission, she was asked to be part of a military team that was competing at Ironman Talinn in Estonia. Another Army athlete, none other than Kat Matthews, lent Wild a bike and off she went. Wild would finish the race in an impressive 9:48:14. Later that year Matthews and Wild would take first and second at a half-distance triathlon. Not long after Matthews would turn her sights on professional triathlon (Matthews is a multiple Ironman champion and took second at the Ironman World Championship in St. George in 2022), while Wild, at the suggestion of her commanding officer, would try to become the first woman to pass the Paratrooper course.
“He had served in that unit, so he knew what was coming,” Wild says of the push to the historic attempt. “I think he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I was pushing myself to whatever limit it was going to be. I don’t fear failure at all. I kind of cherish the idea of finding my limit, and if that meant going and doing the course and not passing, that would have been almost enough.”
She did pass, though, and while she initially hoped that she could just quietly join the army’s elite division, life wasn’t going to be that simple.
“The day I passed, we do a parade where you receive your maroon beret,” she remembers. “I came off the parade … and I marched off the square and I was then marched into a senior officers office and he said ‘Right, just so you’re aware, The Times, the Telegraph, they’re all running a story about you tomorrow. It went huge and I was not prepared for that.”
Wild’s phone went crazy – she would turn it off for two days.
“All sorts of people that you haven’t spoken to in years just suddenly see your name and it’s just excitement and it’s interest,” she says. She was warned not to read any comments that might appear on social media and the interne, but she couldn’t help herself. “When I did turn my phone and I sat and I read every single comment. And you can imagine the old Army folk that don’t want women.”
In public she’d hear the whispers as she walked past some people – “That’s that girl,” she’d hear them say. “That chick that’s passed the company.”
“So, yeah, it was huge,” Wild reluctantly admits. “I kept really quiet about it until I did a couple of online talks when they were doing recruiting stuff. And I started talking about the experience and I then had people, young girls and young boys coming to me for advice, or saying that they were inspired, or just wanted to hear more about my story. I pretty much flipped then from where I’d stayed completely quiet to realizing that I had a the honour of the responsibility of inspiring the younger generation. Proving that they can go and do something difficult. It doesn’t have to be that (passing the Paratrooper course), but there can be something that nobody’s done before, or something that seems impossible.”
“Go and give it a go and and don’t be afraid of failing it,” Wild continues. “I found a real passion for actually pushing myself, telling other people to push themselves and saying, hey, let’s all do this. It’s fine if we fail.”
While Wild endured her share of misogynist attitude, surprisingly there wasn’t as much from her fellow Paratroopers as you might expect.
“I proved myself physically and it was something they couldn’t question,” she says. “I went on exercise with them almost immediately and we would do physical training. I think maybe they looked at me at the start and wondered ‘what can she do?’ Then, when I did it, it was a cool. I think they’re attitude was ‘She can keep up and she can do the job, so we don’t really care.’”
“Attitudes in the army have really changed that way, probably worldwide, and I think people really are starting to appreciate some of the incredible physical abilities that women have,” she continues.
For almost three years Wild remained the only woman who managed to attain that prestigious maroon beret, but now she’s thrilled to report that three other women have managed the feat. The news that another woman had managed the gruelling feat was, in the end, a relief.
“When the second girl passed it three years later, it was this weird moment where I was sort of more proud,” Wild rememberes. “I almost had a worry that I was this anomaly and it wasn’t going to inspire anyone. It wasn’t going to start anything. But then, when we got another girl through, for me that was the moment we proved that it can happen. The doors are open now and people are actually going to walk through it.”
Change the world as a soldier – check. Become a professional triathlete – check. Wild loves both endeavours, so regardless of how things go through the rest of the year, she’s looking forward to what’s ahead. With more officer training on tap for next year, combined with her impressive achievements, there’s quite a career lining up for her in the Army. First things first, though, will be the Ironman World Championship in Nice. Taking on the world’s best just adds more drive to be her best.
“I always almost always want to be beaten because it gives me something to chase and I just love being around people that are better than me, because they kind of inspire,” she says.
It seems funny hearing that from a woman who has inspired so many and achieved so much, but that’s likely what has helped her to do just that.
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