Ashbourne Festival 2023 presents Karen Darke, Olympic cycling gold medallist.

Karen speaks from the heart with honesty & open-ness, sharing personal stories and experiences that have given her unique insights into overcoming challenge, embracing change, making the ‘impossible’ possible, and about stretching ourselves to achieve surprising things. She inspires audiences around the world with her ability to connect with diverse audiences from multinational businesses to young school children. Her most intimate audience has been 6 lovely humans, the largest 3000, and she is as adept virtually as face to face.

Karen views life as an adventure, and embraces all its’ experiences as opportunities to learn and grow. She has experienced some fairly extreme lows on her own roller-coaster, and knows how trauma, stress and life events can lead to fear, pain and under-performance. She has also created some highs, exploring and extending the limits of possibility physically, mentally and emotionally. She has skied across icecaps, kayaked at extreme latitudes of the planet, and hand-cycled across the world’s biggest mountain ranges and alongside some of the longest rivers.