Green: Depression left me suicidal

SITTING IN the library of a luxury hotel in the Bahamas, Jack Green is a sun-dappled picture of health wearing the Great Britain kit for the first time in almost two years. ‘Normally as soon as they said I have to wear a GB polo I’d be like, “No, I want to wear my normal clothes”,’ said Green. ‘But as soon as I got my kit this time I put it on. I’m not sure I appreciated it before but I definitely do now. I had a long journey and there are a lot of people who didn’t think I’d return, so it’s nice to be back.’ Green (right) represented his country through the age groups, turning professional at 18. At 19, he was one of the youngest to win a European Under 23 400m hurdle title on the track and at 20 was just 0.13sec off winning a medal in the 4x400m at the London Olympics. But Green saw it all as a failure, viewing it through the prism of depression — an illness he now recognises he has suffered with since around the age of 14 when his grandfather Tony died. ‘The Olympics was my trigger — it was all building up to such a big event and my mindset wasn’t very good,’ he said. ‘I expected to do very well and realistically I did but I wanted more and I wasn’t able to control that. Like anyone who suffers with depression, I was suicidal. At that point, running was my focus and I wasn’t in love with life, so running was the last thing I really wanted to do.’ Green was so low he could not catch a train or see a car without thinking about throwing himself under it, while he put all the knives in his house outside the door because he was worried what he might do. Finally, in July 2013, he announced he was taking a break from athletics. ‘I said to people close to me, “It could be a month or it could be for the rest of my life, I just don’t know”,’ he said. ‘If you look at track and field, I’m the only person who’s been public about it. But I can’t be the only person in track and field. Sport is merely an exaggeration of life but you have huge ups and huge downs instead of gentle roller coasters. Sports people are seen as heroes, superheroes if you like — the closest you can get to Superman — but we’re just normal.’ Green took medication for just under a year and now works with a psychologist. By early 2014, the athlete felt ready to return to the track but discovered he was running with a fractured back, so postponed his comeback until this year. He now trains in Florida with renowned American speed coach Loren Seagrave and is living off the money he made before the London Olympics.

He still has his bad days — ‘but who doesn’t?’ — making his comeback in a low-key relay meeting in Gainesville in April. At the IAAF World Relays in the Bahamas last week, he ran a storming third leg to help qualify Great Britain’s 4x400m team for the Rio Olympics next year. ‘I have pre-depression and post-depression personal bests now and that way I’m successful every day,’ said Green, laughing. ‘But I’ve had my fastest ever opening for a season. My aim remains the same as ever and that is to win Olympic gold.’