Jake Wightman celebrates his world title in Eugene in 2022 (Picture: Getty)
I’ve had to make the decision to pull out of the defence of my 1500metres world title this summer and concentrate on the 2024 Olympics.
After suffering shin and hamstring injuries, one after the other, I am just going to be too far off where I want to be on the startline at the championships in Budapest in August, so I am not going to be taking up my wild card as reigning champion.
It all began with a foot injury I picked up in the gym earlier this year which saw me miss the European Indoor Championships – and things went from there.
It turned out to be more than just a bump in the road. After some discomfort in my Achilles from where I had been wearing the boot, I arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona, for training camp pain-free. However, a couple of weeks in, I got a sore shin and returned to the UK, where I picked up a bad hamstring and that was the final nail in the coffin for my world championship hopes.
I found myself having to make a choice: to try to do absolutely everything and push myself to get to the world championships, or make the sensible call and sit this one out, with the focus on the Paris Games.
The Olympics is the one you grow up watching as a kid and which carries the special cache. A world title and an Olympic title carry the same level of achievement but ask anyone on the street and they will be so stunned if you say you are an Olympic gold medallist.
So that has to be my aim now: just over 12 months of absolute concentration on the ultimate prize. I do think everything will be forgotten about this summer if I can make it fully fit to the startline in France and that has to be the goal now.
I have to believe this is the right call to make. I could have gone to Budapest and not done anything. I could push and push, or instead give myself and my body the rest it needs.
Jake Wightman training hard in Arizona this year (Picture: Jake Wightman/Instagram)
It’s a relief, really, now to know what stands ahead of me. Yes, I won’t be racing during the summer, and that in itself will be strange, but I know I can be back running by next month and doing cross-country races in November or December.
For now, it is about resting and re-setting. Paris is the motivation – not the be-all and end-all for my career but the opportunity, certainly, to sort some unfinished business at the Olympics, where I missed out on selection for the Rio Games and then finished tenth in the Tokyo final two years ago.
The biggest thing you can possibly do in my sport is to win Olympic gold and everything is now going to be planned immaculately for me to be at my very best in Paris in just over a year’s time.
I know I can give that Olympic dream 100 per cent now and make myself as robust and bulletproof as possible for that challenge.
Tokyo taught me I was 90 per cent of the way towards where I wanted to be but that I had more to do and learn to achieve something. Eugene last year and winning world gold showed me the results of what I could do.
This year has been far from a smooth ride but that’s athletics. Indeed, that’s sport. Don’t be in track and field if you can’t ride the rollercoaster and put up with the good and the bad. I know how it is.
I have never once asked ‘why me?’. The situation is all in my own hands now and patience is the best way ahead from here.
I am positive, upbeat and sure in the decision I have had to make. I can’t wait to get back on that road to Paris, and I am sure this is the right way to do that and the best thing for me in terms of the bigger picture.
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It was just time to make a very difficult choice
