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| Baptiste is back: Baptiste became the first british sprinter to win a gold medal on the world stage in 12 years. Photo: Telegraph |
Leon, thank you for taking some time out to be with Tracktics. A true pleasure, first of all how did it all begin for you with track athletics?
For me i started playing sport from a fairly young age, I started playing at the age of seven. My main passion at that time was football, I played from all the way from seven to the age of 14. It was only a knee injury that I sustained in football which then allowed me to make the transition from football to sprinting. My big breakthrough then came at the age of 16, i'd only been in the sport for a year or two but i managed to get selected to represent England at the International at the under 17 level.
At that age what do you believe you had that differed from other athletes around you?
I think one of the main things for me is I have always had a desire to win, a desire to be successful. I was brought up in London, brought up in a single parent family, it was literally just me and my when i was mum growing up, so money was tight and things were tough if i'm being totally honest with you.
I had to do a paper round at six o'clock in the morning everyday, i had to do a milk round twice a week at four in the morning so i'd be getting up relatively early from a young age. I think i was only 13 at the time, so these sort of things moulded me into who i am today really. My mum didn't have the money for me to just go to the to the cinema or bowling with my friends, so i had to work extremely hard for it. With that i believe it has moulded me into that thought, to get somewhere or something I have to work for it and work extremely hard for it.
You see so many successful GB athletes at a youth level but fail to be successful on a european/world stage? What was different for you and how would you change this?
I think one of the main things we have and without sounding too over critical is the standard of coaching in this country could be improved. I think we need to teach our athletes the basic fundamentals, so one of them for a sprinter is learning how to accelerate from 0-30 metres and practicing it all year round. I think one of the old traditions in this country is that we tend to avoid that when we start our winter training in October mainly due to weather. Then we put our spikes on in April and sprinting doesn't become natural to us we create this massive block of training, which is good generally but if we don't teach our athletes the basic fundamentals then there's a good chance if you don't practice something week in week out when you do try and ask your body to run fast the chances are you will probably get injured. I think that's one of the things we have currently in this country, that when we get too the ability of being quite successful at the age of 17, 18, 19 but after that our athletes get a little bit lost in the system and a lot of that is due to injury and you could say to a certain degree the standard of coaching in this country generally could improve.
For me how it was different, I think I class myself in that statistic as well because i was a very successful junior athlete and then some of it was due to injury but i didn't really perform till my mid 20's. So there was a six to seven year gap of me not winning anything at all of significance. I worked out things with my coach and we just found the right mix on what was right for us and managed to become successful in doing so.
Funding is a massive issue in the sport, explain to us what you went through and your advice to athletes that believe funding is the only way you can make it in the sport?
For me that's something i disagree with, i felt like i was most successful when i didn't have any funding. The main reason for that is because i go back to the word structure, structure to my day. I trained from 9 to 2 o'clock then i'd work from two-thirty till midnight but there was structure to the day. I knew i had to plan in sessions, stretching sessions accordingly, i planned my massage and physio sessions accordingly. Where as when i was on funding i don't feel like i had any structure, yes i still had the training but i'd come home and it would just relax me. Stick the Xbox on for 3 to 4 hours play that, it just relaxed me too much to a point where i found myself just thinking about athletics continuously. Where as going back to when i didn't have funding i felt like i had that hunger to achieve, that desire to win, i knew that i had to give it absolutely 110% in everything that i did in order to be successful. Where as when i had the funding i relaxed myself too much and thats not to say your can't be successful with it or without it you have a lot of athletes that didn't have any funding going back a few years, you look at the Jamaicans and Americans they don't have any funding set up. For me its just a case of the individual you can be successful both ways.
You've been through injuries yourself, many future athletes will go through this experience. What advice would you give for them to bounce back with?
The main thing is for me i've had three knee injuries but two surgeries, one of my surgeries when i was 19. I really struggled mentally from that because in previous years before that i was very good junior. I'd done well at the junior european championships, multiple medals at the junior UK championships, had the surgery and then went into the senior ranks and it was a whole different ball game. Guys who i was beating as a junior athlete were now beating me so i found it quite difficult to take it was just a lot different.
Though the second time when i had the surgery i've been able to deal with it a lot better so mentally i'm stronger, older and wiser but i think one of the main things is the way i got through all of that. I'm very lucky to have a mother and a grandmother who've really supported me throughout my career. Not necessarily financially and this is quite a key point but someone always telling me i can do it and she believes in me so that then helped me to continue to carry on. The main thing though is having the belief and surrounding yourself in good people.
You talk of your mum as an inspiration but who was your track idol when you were younger and how did they inspire you to achieve?
My idol for me was Michael Johnson, I remember him winning the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Watching it on TV and I was watching it in amazement and i remember saying to myself i'd love to be like that guy one day. I also thought when i started training for athletics at the age of 14 years old, me and the boys walking back from training and we use to think that record will never ever get beaten. Obviously five years ago the great Usain Bolt broke the record but Michael Johnson is someone who stands out for me.
Also I'm a big boxing fan so when i was growing up the sport was very popular on terrestrial TV where as now you have to pay for it so it's not as popular as it used to be. So growing up you had the likes of Mike Tyson, Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn. The reason i like these boxers was because of the sort of persona that they had, they played this character where everyone wanted them to lose but when they got into that square ring they were switched on mentally and physically. To play and this character with such arrogance but mentally they were very switched on athletes and that's something i've always admired.
For many athletes that we have interviewed they have been going through their degree whilst still training, you had to cope with working whilst training what advice would you give when it comes down to time management?
Time management is key. It's really going through and doing everything you can to be successful. So for instance you've got to structure your day well, so yes you go to training to improve but how you going to sustain that improvement? Keeping good mobility, making sure your doing all your stretching, seeing the physio, getting the right nutrition and all these things including time management can improve your success.
With training, having the ability to go to bed early, get up early in terms of when you've got to go out there and train because you never know when you get to a major competition or championships and the first race is at half past 9. Then you've got to be up at six o'clock in the morning, have your breakfast, give yourself enough time to digest, then travel to the competition, warm up and then the call room. All these things to co inside with time management and that plays a key factor to your success.
Finally Double Commonwealth champion it's a fantastic title to have? Just explain what it means and how much work it took to reach that level?
For me it was a lot of hard work and dedication. As i said a very successful junior athlete and then after that it was absolutely nothing and that was just so frustrating. I knew i had the talent to go out there achieve but for various different reasons it just didn't happen for me. However the reasons i continued for seven years where most people would have given up was because i saw improvements, so every year i saw an improvement in my 200m. It wasn't always the improvement that i wanted however it was an improvement which was satisfactory enough for me to carry on within the sport.
The main thing i'm trying to say is i've been through so much, i've been through two surgeries, i didn't make my first senior national team to the age of 25. Like i said most people would have given up but i just had that desire to carry on. It stems from my younger days when i was young and coming up my mum always installed that hard working discipline and that if i want something, never to give up, keep trying and hopefully things will work out for the better and so it did.
Check Leon out on Twitter or to keep up with Leon's progress to Glasgow with all his track results.
Really good article, thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
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