Lottery funding’s grateful winner

Triple jumper Nathan Douglas (Oxford City AC) is athletics’ version of a Lottery winner.

Ask the 21-year-old how he made the giant leap from sixth in the UK rankings last summer with a lifetime best of 16.30m to victory in this season’s Norwich Union Olympic Trials with 16.95m – and he puts it all down to the value of the UK Athletics World Class Potential Programme, funded by Sport England from the National Lottery.

“The main thing that has made me improve is the fact that I was able to see my coach more often this year because I have been on Potential funding,” he says. “It’s not huge money but it’s a massive help.”

He passed his driving test last November, bought an N-reg Vauxhall Corsa in December (the month of his 21st birthday) – and has been able to travel three times a week to his coach, Ted King, the UK Athletics High Performance Centre Manager at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium.

Initially, he had only a 45 minutes’ journey each away while he finished his Sports Science Degree course at Loughborough University. Now he is living back home in Oxford and it can take 90 minutes for his little Corsa – “I haven’t got the money for a Ferrari yet,” he smiles – to chug up the M40, round the M42 and along the busy M6 to the West Midlands HPC.

But the regular trips were well worthwhile because, in addition to the advice of coach King, “getting physio and massage on a regular basis boosted everything for me.”

And the time and effort – and funding – all proved worthwhile at the NU Trials in cold, windy, rainy Manchester when Douglas hopped, stepped and jumped from obscurity all the way to the Olympic Games.

The Olympic A standard was 16.95m. “I didn’t really think about it too much,” he recalls. And why should he? He’d finished 14th at last summer’s European Under 23 Championships, his first venture into major international competition.

“Basically, my coach had a belief in me and told me in the winter that I could make it. As soon as he rushed that belief into me, I got thinking and decided that if I could get everything to click I could get 16.85m ... 85, but I couldn’t see myself getting 16.95!”

So what changed between the winter and July? “I didn’t know I could do it but I had the belief that I could do it. At the start of the season, I kept having no-jumps of about 16.80m…”

That said, he retained the Norwich Union AAA Under 23 title at Bedford in late June with a best on the day of 16.42m, 74cm further than his closest rival but not a clear indication that he was poised to join ebullient Phillips Idowu (Belgrave Harriers) in Team GB at the Olympics.

Then came the NU Olympic Trials, which Idowu missed to protect a minor injury. Even though Douglas is not renowned as one of jumping’s great showmen, as he stood on the runway, he made the uncharacteristic decision to encourage the Manchester crowd to warm their hands.

He explains: “I got the crowd clapping and they got a bit quick pretty soon, and I thought ‘I’d better start running!’ The next thing, I was flying in the pit. When I landed that jump and saw the white flag, I was so happy. When I saw 16.95, there were no words to describe the emotion.

“All my dreams came true at once.”

To add to the inspirational nature of the achievement, his move into the triple jump was caused by one of those pleas for which team managers are much maligned at club level: ‘Can you do it for a point?’

Douglas explains: “I was a sprinter and long jumper, probably 13 years old, and my club never had a triple jumper. I think they thought, ‘He can sprint. He can jump. He can do it.’ So I thought, ‘OK – give me a go.’ I wasn’t fantastic for a start. But after a winter of training, it all started clicking together really.”

He ranked 12th in the UK as an Under 15 in 1997 with a 12.38m effort (wind: +2.1) – 89cm behind the best in the age group at the time, John Davies (Havering Mayesbrook). Then his improvement was so dramatic that he picked up two English Schools titles and had such a growth spurt that he shot up to 1.81m tall, suffered hamstring problems and yet still triple jumped 14.31m to go third in the UK Under 17 rankings behind two Birchfield Harriers, Jonathan Moore and Phil Ferdinand.

Now, as Douglas settles into the Olympics Preparation Camp in Cyprus, he is ranked No.2 Senior in the UK, behind Idowu’s wonderful winning leap of 17.47m at the Norwich Union London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace on 30 July, and 29th in the World.

The chase to succeed the retired Jonathan Edwards (Gateshead Harriers) as Olympic Champion will doubtless focus on the World and European Champion, Christian Olsson (Sweden). Intriguingly, Olsson’s best of the year (17.61m) places him only fifth on the World lists behind Melvin Lister (USA), who reached 17.78m in California last month; Jadel Gregorio (Brazil), 17.72m at home in Sao Paulo in June; Danila Burkenya (Russia), 17.68m in Tula last month; and Walter Davis (USA), 17.63m in California last month. Idowu, is ranked seventh and is working diligently to improve on his sixth place in Sydney.

Ask Douglas to quantify his own Athens hopes and he says: “I’m glad to make the Games because a lot of people didn’t think I could.

“I want to perform to my best. I’m not really a medal contender or anything. I just want to go there and try and do myself justice.”