British hope Douglas “can jump well under pressure”

The change in Nathan Douglas’s standing in international athletics was clear the moment he emerged from the call up room on his way to the Triple Jump runway at the recent London IAAF Super Grand Prix meeting. Previously, this unassuming athlete might have been just another man in the line-up. This time he was at the front of the queue.

And as he walked past the throng of officials, journalists, managers and coaches on his way to the track people stopped and turned. “Good luck, good luck Nathan.” Douglas smiled back. “Thank you, thank you,” he nodded as he led his opponents into the arena.

He led them off again too, an hour and half later, having comprehensively defeated a field that included 1999 World champion Charles Friedek of Germany, World Championship bronze medallist Leevan Sands of the Bahamas, and Olympic finallist Kenta Bell of USA.

“I produced one of the best series I’ve ever done today,” said Douglas as he squeezed through the throng again, having leapt beyond 17 metres three times, including a best of 17.32m. “I was nervous coming into the event as people have built me up a bit, but I feel I coped well against a world class field. I knew a lot of eyes were on me and I proved to everyone that I can jump well under pressure.”

Being “built up” is something Douglas has had to get used to in a hurry in the last few weeks after twice jumping further than he ever had in his life at this year’s UK World Trials. His winning leap in Manchester on 10th July – 17.64m – not only won the event, but eclipsed Jonathan Edwards’s AAAs championships record and catapulted the 22 year-old to number three in the world, instantly marking him out as an unexpected medal prospect at the World Championships in Helsinki.

“It was a great surprise, as you can imagine,” he laughs. “I knew it was a good jump because it felt so easy, but when I saw 17.64m on the scoreboard it did seem quite crazy. When ever I saw other jumpers do those sort of distances I always thought, ‘That’s massive!’. So when I saw it there next to my name … it was amazing.”

National expectations

In a Great Britain team decidedly thin on male medal hopes, Douglas – who hadn’t even jumped 16.50m little more than a year ago – is suddenly carrying the burden of his nation’s expectations. “Douglas tipped for glory” headlines have come thick and fast in the UK, with stories quoting Edwards saying, “Nathan has gone from being a good international to top world class. If he can jump in that kind of form he has a great chance of winning a medal and I think he has the head to do it in the championships.”

Not that the pressure of expectation seems to worry the level-headed Douglas that much. “It’s good to get people to notice me as a triple jumper, that’s been great,” he says. “The attention doesn’t worry me, and I don’t feel overwhelmed. I really appreciate it, but I’m trying not to read too much into it all right now.”

A ‘royal’ guided ascent to the top

Douglas’s breakthrough to international class began last year when he was a surprise winner of the British Olympic trials, improving his best by nearly 50 centimetres to match the qualifying standard of 16.95m and take his place in the Games team. In Athens, Douglas just failed to make the final, finishing 13th in the qualifying rounds with 16.84m, a remarkable performance in his first ever senior international.

So what’s been the key to his rapid rise? “Ted King,” he says, citing the name of his coach without a flicker of hesitation. King famously coached USA’s 1992 Olympic champion Mike Conley, among others. Conley won the Barcelona gold with 18.17m, a massive leap that would have been a world record by 20 centimetres but for a following wind just 0.1m/s above the allowable limit.

“It’s all down to Ted and some hard core coaching,“ says Douglas. “His technical expertise and huge experience has been massively important. In four years he’s increased my pb by nearly 2.20m, which is phenomenal.”

Douglas hooked up with King in 2001, aged 18, when he moved from his home in Oxford to study sports science at Loughborough University, an improving school for so many of Britain’s promising athletes. “He took me for a few sessions, and I guess I must have impressed him because he became more and more involved,” says Douglas. “He’s got years of technical experience as an international coach. It definitely was a step up.”

Middle distances “hurt too much”

Previously, Douglas’s career had been overseen by Steve Hill at Oxford City Athletics Club where he began his athletics career aged seven. Like most youngsters he wanted to be a sprinter but also “dabbled” at middle distances and cross country until “I realised it hurt too much”.

“I used to play football too,” he remembers, “just kicking around with my friends really. Lots of teams wanted me to play for them, but athletics was always my main thing. There was something about it that just caught me.”

His early heroes included Linford Christie, and he remembers the “unbelievable” Long Jump duel between Carl Lewis and Mike Powell at the 1991 World Championships as an inspiring moment. In his teens he became a talented sprinter/jumper, and eventually won county titles at 100m, 200m and Long Jump, before the triple jump “took over” as his best event.

He won the English Schools triple jump title in 2000 and 2001 before going on to win the national juniors. After joining King at Loughborough he picked up the national under 23 crown and competed in his first international championships – the 2003 European under 23s, where he finished 14th. He breached 16 metres for the first time that year too.

Not even in the media guide

At the start of the 2004 season he wasn’t even included in the UK Athletics media guide, which listed potential members of that summer’s senior international teams. The Triple Jump slots were filled by Larry Achike and Phillips Idowu, but Douglas made huge strides to take the national championships and joined Idowu in the Olympic squad.

If 2004 was Douglas’s breakthrough year, 2005 has been his annus mirabilis. He became a full time athlete in October and moved to Birmingham to train at the High Performance Centre based at Alexander Stadium. In the winter he finished fourth at the European Indoor Championships in Madrid, with 16.89m. Then, early this summer, he landed his first 17 metre jump in Bratislava, topping an impressive series with 17.11m. He improved again to 17.27m when finishing fourth in Lausanne, before opening the AAAs with another pb, 17.36m, followed in the very next round by that 17.64m.

“You wouldn’t believe 17 metres was my aim at the start of this year,” he says. “When that came sooner than expected, Ted said, ‘I think you can do 17.50.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a big jump, but maybe I can do it.’ But I never expected 17.64.”

“No big favourites”

The only question now is, can he do it again when it matters most? With Olympic champion Christian Olsson injured, the competition in Helsinki is probably more open than it has been for years. Romania’s Olympic silver medallist Marian Oprea currently leads the world with 17.81m, followed by Brazil’s Jadel Gregorio. Douglas, though confident, is sensibly taking nothing for granted.

“There are no big favourites and no one worries me,” he says. “But there are big jumpers around, even without Olsson. I keep saying it, and it’s true, my only goal at the moment is to qualify for the final.”

It is now 10 years since Edwards became Britain’s first World Triple Jump champion and took the event into unheard of territory. And it’s five years since he claimed his Olympic crown. No-one really expects Douglas to be the new Edwards (just yet) but with London staging the 2012 Olympic Games even he can’t help looking forwards.

“I’m trying to take it step by step, as it comes,” he says. “But of course every athlete wants to reach their peak for an Olympics and with London getting 2012 you can’t help doing that.”

Douglas will be 29 when those Games come around in seven years time, five years younger than Edwards was in Sydney. “We have a great tradition of triple jumping in Britain and I want to do all I can to carry it on,” he says.

In the meantime, however, he’s more than happy with his hasty rise from also-ran to medal contender. Helsinki is merely the next step.

Matthew Brown for the IAAF