Tom Bosworth in the 20km race walk at the IAAF World Championships (© Getty Images)
Great Britain’s Tom Bosworth says he doesn’t need to get faster.
How many top-class athletes have ever said that? Not many, is the likely answer.
But if you race walk 10:58.21 for 3000m and 18:39.47 for 5000m, as Bosworth did in 2016 and 2017 respectively when setting national records to win British titles, it’s not so much more speed needed, but endurance to maintain a heady pace for 20 kilometres.
Come August and the IAAF World Championships London 2017 on The Mall, the race walker from Kent will test himself to see if he has built on his tremendous sixth place at the Olympics last year in 1:20:13 that shaved a slice off his own national record.
Bosworth has whittled away more barriers to a potential medal with fourth in the European Cup at Podebrady in May, and second in April’s IAAF Race Walking Challenge race in Rio Maior at the beginning of April.
More recently, he set an outdoor British 5000m record of 18:43.28 to win yet another national title, and this weekend he will contest a mile race walk at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in London.
The obligatory altitude training and a carefully structured programme from his Leeds Carnegie University base has elevated his chance of a first major podium appearance for a British senior race walker in 43 years, excluding the Commonwealth Games.
Not since Roger Mills race walked to European bronze in a Rome sauna back in 1974 has any Brit returned to the heady days of Olympic success Britain enjoyed throughout the 20th century up to that bronze.
Bosworth thinks he has the means and the mind to produce the ‘one percent’ needed to take those literal final, crucial steps but offers a caveat to those who imagine him already on the podium.
The 27-year-old agrees home support will be the 12th man in a football side along The Mall, but he’s wary of building false hopes.
In fact, the normally amiable race walker was needled by comments after his Olympic effort where he led for the first 12 kilometres.
“People won’t understand that maintaining that position will still be a huge success,” he said.
“It’s great that as a country we’ve got used to getting so many medals, but someone after Rio asked what position I came, and when I said sixth they said, ‘oh, never mind’. I just bit my tongue at that moment and walked away.”
For all that, Bosworth believes he has got the mental strength to consign the never-minds to history, and deal with all around him on 13 August and the big day.
“I tend to thrive under pressure and expectation,” he added. “I like to be nervous, because it means I have the passion to hurt myself.
“Without it, I probably wouldn’t even finish the race.
“I just do my normal routine, and if that goes according to plan, everything else gets shut out, like the cold I had before Rio Maior.
“You do the training, and if that’s gone well, it’s just one more step.
“If it hasn’t, you focus on the race and try to get through it. In those final moments, you know the work has been done and there’s no more you can do.
“People can be harsh on social media if you don’t perform quite well, but they can also be incredibly supportive – and that’s been a new pressure for me to deal with.”
Bosworth says support from coach Andi Drake, his family, and partner Harry Dineley, who accepted Bosworth’s proposal on Copacabana Beach after the Olympics, are invaluable, but the ‘one percent’ extra he gets from an enriched diet that includes spinach smoothies has also made a big difference.
“Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoy my food,” he says.
“My treat after a race is a Chinese takeaway. But I used to go for the five pieces of fruit and veg a day; then made it seven, so I said why not 10 and a full range?
“It’s mostly iron-rich foods like spinach that I chuck in as well as kale to my smoothies; I always have a salad going in the fridge, and chuck all sorts in my porridge in the morning: it just makes you feel so much better.
“I used to take iron supplements, but don’t need that now. I use honey rather than sugar, and a range of fruits; milk and other berries disguise it so you don’t even taste the spinach – it’s tricking yourself so you don’t even taste it – it’s not like munching through a lettuce leaf.”
If the diet is the one percent, then the 99% are the hard miles needed to make sure Bosworth is knocking out four-minute kilometres or quicker to be in the medal mix.
He admits a speed session now is something of a rare luxury, and explains why.
“I’ve got fast enough to where I can get under 19 minutes for 5km – that’s world record pace for 20km. I don’t need to get any faster.
“I just need to get stronger to maintain the speed.
“So 16 minutes for 4km is maybe only one session a week with everything else 10km up to 25km, averaging 7:30 miles throughout, and with the same heart rate when I was doing five minutes per kilometre.
"It makes walking 1:20:00 for a race no longer a surprise.”
Bosworth also believes an inauspicious start as a 12-year-old paid dividends.
Somehow, and with all the distractions open to a teenager, he just kept going through the winless wilderness of club races in Kent.
"I was really bad as a junior. No one would have said I would become an Olympian – not even me.
"Not having that success early has kept me hungry. I’ve just kept going.
“I remember at the European Cup in 2007 I asked Rob Heffernan (2013 world 50km race walk champion) for his autograph. Now I expect him to buy me a beer at the end of the season.”
Paul Warburton for the IAAF
