1. Colin Jackson: The final hurdle
After 18 years at the top of athletics,
Colin Jackson has hung up his
spikes. And there are a few things -
like that bust-up with Linford
Christie, and the truth about his
sexuality - that he'd like to get off
his chest. Interview by Nick Duerden
www.Independent.co.uk
Saturday, 6 September 2003
Colin Jackson cannot remember the last time he went to the
cinema. "The cinema? No way!" he mock-shrieks, bringing a
hand to his mouth as it breaks out into a mile-wide smile. (The
man, incidentally, is consummately camp. When he giggles,
and he giggles often, he resembles a panto dame.) "The seats
in those places are terrible! Your back would ache and you'd
probably do damage to your hamstrings." He shakes his head
exaggeratedly. "No, nooo! Too much risk. The upkeep of my
body is all, it's everything."
One of the greatest British athletes of all time, Jackson is
retired now, of course, but old habits die hard. Cinema
continues to be the pastime of other people, of regular folk. If
he wants to be sociable, he eats a banana, thereby missing the
point entirely. But then throughout his very full 18 years as a
world-class hurdler - for which Jackson proudly holds numerous
records - he remained almost terrifyingly disciplined. This was a
man, for example, who never got drunk, who never greedily
gorged on a kebab at three o'clock in the morning only to
regret it come daybreak. He never took a day off, never once
veered from his strict diet. When he was thirsty, he would avoid
water because of the bloating sensation water can cause.
Instead, he would chew on a vegetable. In fact, he admits now,
he was border-line anorexic. The way he tells it, he very rarely
even had sex. Poor, poor fellow.
"To succeed you have to be strong, aware and totally selfish,"
he proclaims. "Believe me, the mind can be a very powerful
tool, and it's this," he says, tapping at his temples, "that
separates your everyday medal contenders from actual
winners. You need huge levels of discipline to become a
worldbeater." His face becomes scarily intense. "Let's put it
another way. There are - what? - something like 5 billion
people in the world. You, as a journalist, have no idea whether
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2. you are one of the very best writers, do you?" Well, I tell him, I
could hazard a guess. "Sure, anyway. But I know that I was
one of the best athletes, one of the very best, on the entire
planet. See? The discipline is worth it because the rewards are
massive."
Jackson's final race was at the World Indoor Championships in
Birmingham back in March of this year. He wanted to exit at
the very top of his game; he yearned to win. "I'm in great
shape at the moment," he said at the time, "[and] I'm looking
forward to winning my next medal."
As it transpired, he finished fifth. Once, this would have left him
devastated, crushed, a shadow of his former self. But despite
initial disappointment, the 36-year-old was finally learning
acceptance.
"My first reaction was to find another race so I could finish my
career properly," he admits. "I've been competitive all my life,
so it's difficult to go out on a whimper. But I had been gradually
aware for a while that my competitive streak was no longer as
strong as it once was. Yes, I'd lost my last race, but I was still
among the top five in the world, and that's no mean feat."
Retiring from sport, he says, "felt like the most natural thing in
the world".
As is common practice for leading sportsmen and women these
days, Colin Jackson has just published his autobiography. It's a
swift, impressive read, and glory spills from its pages. In it, he
talks about the friendships he made, his poor girlfriend who
always came second place in his affections - silver to the gold
of hurdling, if you like - and the bitter feud with fellow athlete
Linford Christie, former teammate and friend who, after their
business foundered, became his enemy. He talks of all the
medals accrued (25 major championship gongs) and the
records set (seven European, eight Commonwealth and nine
UK, all at 110m). And he obsesses over time. Seconds, in his
world, were of crucial importance, and he reels them off here
endlessly. For instance, back in August 1993, at the Outdoor
World Championship in Stuttgart, he completed the 110m
hurdles in 12.91 seconds, .02 seconds faster than anybody
else, ever. A year later, at the European Indoor Championships
in Sindelfingen, Germany, he ran the 60m hurdles in 7.30
seconds. Both times remain unbeaten, and it is these that send
him to sleep happy at night.
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3. Growing up in the Seventies in one of Cardiff's newest
neighbourhoods, the young Colin shared his enthusiasm for
watching athletics with his Jamaican-born father, but early on
had decided to become an electrician. By the time he turned
14, however, he had joined the local junior athletes group, and
had enrolled the services of a personal coach who pushed him
as hard as he would one day push himself. Within four years,
he was getting better results than everybody else. He won his
first gold medal at 19, and this would set the pace for the next
two decades of his life. Where many athletes peak early,
Jackson proved remarkably consistent. Only injury, he says
now, prevented him from dominating every event he entered.
"Most of the time, people had no idea I was even injured in the
first place because I still took part," he shrugs. It was injury
that held him back at the 1992 Olympics, limping in at seventh
place when he was expected to scoop gold. And his poor
showing in Atlanta in 1996 was down to illness. "Basically,
every time I came fourth or fifth in a race instead of first or
second was because I was hurting somewhere. I never stopped
running even when I should have been recuperating, and that
was a mistake because a top-class athlete cannot perform to
the best of his ability at 97 per cent."
He shakes his head, looks at his feet and seems thoroughly
miserable. Clearly, these failures trouble him still.
Colin Jackson's athletic life was almost monastic. He lived for
those 13 seconds on f the track, his existence devoted to
discipline, regiment and training, whatever the cost to his
personal life. "I guess you could say," he grins, "that I had a
one-track mind."
And he's not talking about sex. For many years, Jackson's
peers misinterpreted his reluctance to socialise, to party, as a
sign of his closet homosexuality. There were, they thought,
several tell-tale signs: he was theatrical, a perennial giggler,
and an insatiable gossip; the girlfriend he claimed was waiting
at home was never seen; and he remained intensely private.
"Everybody always thought I was gay because I never played
around, and that's very rare in my world because, believe me,
everybody else did," he says. "Nobody could understand it.
Here I was, number one in the world, in some exotic location. I
could have had [girls] flocking to my room. But I never did. I
simply wouldn't allow it."
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4. Presumably, I suggest, this was for fear of sapping his
strength, just like the boxer who won't have sex the night
before a big fight.
"I can honestly say that I have no idea whether sex does ruin
your performance, because I've never had sex before a race.
Never." He gives a hollow laugh. "That's just how I am. I was
so focused on the run that sex would be the last thing on my
mind."
In the ferociously competitive world of sport, discipline is of
course paramount, but Jackson's behaviour here was a little
extreme. Even David Beckham, whose commitment to
footballing excellence is obvious, found the time to co-create
two new lives.
"I don't think I've missed out on anything, though," he insists,
blissfully oblivious to anything but his own reality. "Except
perhaps a sense of enjoyment. I pushed myself so hard
throughout my career that I never stopped to appreciate any of
my achievements. Even when I did well in a race, I wanted to
do better the next time. Obviously that's not the best way to go
about having a happy life, and it's only now, having written the
book, that I can reflect on that."
Real life did, occasionally, manage to penetrate through all the
discipline, and it is these episodes in his autobiography that
best serve to humanise this most focused of athletes. He was
plunged into depression, and his form faltered, in 1999 when
his best friend and hurdling prodigy Ross Baillie died, suddenly,
of a nut allergy. Jackson had been on the phone to a mutual
friend when the tragic accident occurred. He could hear Baillie
coughing in the background, moments after swallowing a single
mouthful of a coronation chicken sandwich which, it later
transpired, had traces of nut in it. At the time, Jackson was
oblivious to the severity of the situation. "Tell him to shut up,"
he told his friend, "I can't hear what you're saying." Twenty
minutes later, Baillie was rushed to hospital in a coma. Four
days later, he was dead. "I wandered about in a daze," he says
now. "Nothing made sense any more." Nevertheless, within a
month he was winning again, doing so, he says, in his friend's
memory.
And then there was the time, back in 1992, when he allowed
close friend Linford Christie to convince him that they should
set up a sports management company together. Jackson had
never previously permitted anything to interfere with his
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5. running, but Christie, who was coming to the end of his career
and was keen to branch out, was persuasive. Nuff Respect was,
effectively, created to exploit their success, and to make them
lots of money. But within a couple of years their relationship
had begun to sour.
"We didn't work well together at all," he says. "I was more
thoughtful than Linford, I had more direction, and I wasn't so
backward-thinking as he was. Basically, he wasn't in touch with
reality at all, and, as far as I could see, the business to him was
all about ego and becoming a superstar. I wasn't interested in
that."
In the book's most candid chapter, Jackson details the former
friends' slow descent into purgatory with a certain amount of
relish. As painted by Jackson, Christie was headstrong but
blind, a virtual megalomaniac, and a clueless chairman. By
1997, Jackson wanted out in order to re-focus solely on his
hurdling. He explained this to Christie and Christie was, initially
at least, sympathetic. But when it came to splitting the
business's assets, according to Jackson, he became awkward,
then difficult, then impossible. He wouldn't turn up to meetings,
refused to answer calls or return messages.
"And this went on for months - months!" Jackson says, shaking
his head. "I couldn't understand why he was being so annoying
- so childish. All I wanted to do was move on - you know, let
me go, please."
Eventually he managed to pin Christie down. They spoke on the
phone, and the conversation was civil. They arranged to meet
the following day at the office to which only the latter had keys;
the former would collect his things; they would part with their
friendship bruised but ultimately intact.
"And what happened? He never showed, he just left me
standing. I was livid, I was so, so ... furious that I was ready to
kill. And I came to a decision, not a rational one but one I was
fully prepared to go ahead with. I was going to torch the place,
set it on fire and play Linford at his own childish games. See
how he liked it."
At which point, he says now, fate intervened. On the steps of
the office were two young mothers with prams, deep in
conversation. Unwilling to commit arson within the clear view of
witnesses, Jackson impatiently waited for them to leave. But
they continued chatting, and eventually he walked away. He
then decided to hit Christie another way, and cleared the
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6. company's joint bank account of all the money he believed he
was owed - in total, £55,000. Christie was furious, and, says
Jackson, subsequently attempted to tarnish his name within the
athletics community.
"I ran into him just last week actually," Jackson says, grinning
victoriously. "It was at an athletics function in Zurich, in public,
so he couldn't ignore me. But he looked at me with this really
angry face. He's still convinced I wronged him somehow."
The pair have yet to build bridges.
"I hope he reads the book, but I reckon seeing it all down in
black and white will horrify him because, come on, nobody
wants to read those kind of things about themselves, do they?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not harbouring grudges, I just said
what needed to be said. Deep down, Linford's a good guy and
he knows the score. If he came to my house, I'd invite him in
for coffee. 'Course I would."
So what now for Colin Jackson? Well, in addition to the
obligatory dabble in sports commentary, he wants to produce
documentaries for television, and has even written a film script,
which his good friend Duncan Kenworthy (producer of Four
Weddings and a Funeral) will cast an eye over when ready. But
his biggest hope is that, with a life of discipline at last behind
him, he will become something of an ordinary guy. In the
book's final pages, he writes: "Perhaps I will sort something out
in my private life, too. Perhaps things might blossom again with
girlfriend Sam. You never know."
And have they?
Jackson kicks back his heels and hoots with nervous laughter.
"I wouldn't want that kind of pressure just yet, to be honest,
because the next step for us would have to be a ring on the
finger, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I need to be happy
with myself before I can make anybody else happy. And I know
that before I settle down to a life of responsibility," he says,
giggling again, his voice a high-pitched squeak, "I want to
play!"
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