IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY
Williamson passes on the baton for new era that has witnessed a Tartan renaissance...
THE son also rises. The father prospers, then survives and now looks forward to a renaissance in Scottish athletics. There was a moment that Graham Williamson, the classic Scottish miler, recognised that something more than athleticism ran in the family.
‘Jamie was in an international schools race. He was 15 against 18-year-olds, 5ft 4in against six footers,’ says father of his son. ‘He was in the pack but going well. He just held it, held it, held it. All the way round. He then pulled away and won. He then proceeded to be sick.’
Williamson turned to his wife, Carole, also an elite runner, and said: ‘You know what, he has it.’
Increasingly in Scottish athletics, it is a sentiment that applies to so many others. Eleven Scots, at least, will compete at the World Championships next month. The Scottish 1-2-3-4 in the men’s 1,500 metres at the British trials in Birmingham — Chris O’Hare, Josh Kerr, Jake Wightman and Neil Gourley — brings back echoes of the glory days of Williamson, John Robson and Nat Muir in the 1970s and 1980s.
‘The performances last weekend were fantastic,’ says Williamson. ‘I believe the future of British 1,500m running lies with Josh and Jake. Josh is massively talented. He has huge potential. It will be really exciting to see how he develops.
‘Hopefully both can stay healthy and mature into solid world-class performers, not only for this year’s World Championships but also looking out to Tokyo in 2020. We have a special interest in Jake as my wife is his godmother.’
He also, of course, has a paternal interest in Jamie, whose torn calf muscle has wrecked a season that was full of promise. It is 20 years since the birth of Jamie. It coincided with the death of Williamson as a top-class athlete. The son now seeks to pursue an international career. The father is reluctant to look back.
‘I am the past,’ he says. ‘If you keep looking back then you can’t move forward and that is why I like to talk about where Scottish athletics is now rather than what I did or what others did.
‘The future is Chris O’Hare, Jake, Josh, Andrew Butchart, Callum Hawkins. It is about Laura Muir, Eilish McColgan, Eilidh Doyle and others. It is about the legacy they will leave.’
Despite his protestations, one must pause to reflect on the achievements of Williamson. Briefly, he won both the World Student Games and European Junior Championships in 1979.
He still holds the Scottish mile (3.50.64), 1,000m and 2,000m records. He could compete with the Coes, Ovetts and Crams. And beat them. His Under-20 records were never matched by that extraordinary triumvirate. He was shamefully excluded from the 1980 Olympics with the selectors preferring Steve Cram, despite Williamson’s superior record.
At that time his records included: Scottish Junior 800m and 1,500m champion; Scottish Junior 1,500m and 3,000m record holder; UK record holder for Junior mile; AAA Under-20 champion.
Williamson states this is all ‘the black and white’ of the past and he prefers to look at the Technicolor of the present and future. He concedes he had ‘good years’, he admits he was a resilient competitor, he accepts he held his own against the greats.
But the compelling story is how it ended. In retrospect, more than his career was on the line.
‘I now realise that from 1982 onwards there was something not right,’ says Williamson, who was by then barely 22.
‘By 1984, I was dying in races for no apparent reason,’ he says. A year later, at only 25, Williamson was sweating excessively on a regular basis. It was the first sign of an overreactive pituitary gland.
‘I had tests and my red blood cell count was astronomically high. My blood was very thick. I did a battery of tests and nothing really showed up. We just left it and it went on for years.’
His running career ended in 1986. It was, though, in 1997 that Williamson came to a crisis. Jamie was born and his father’s condition became visible. ‘My face was like a turnip. People did not recognise me. I had put on so much weight. I was still running, unbelievably. Not very fast, but still running,’ he says.
‘Finally, I saw somebody in Manchester who knew what they were doing. He told me I had Cushing’s Disease. I was operated on to remove a tumour. I had walked round with it for 15 years.’
The recovery was slow.
‘I did not really see Jamie for the first year because I was in and out of hospital but I was running again within a couple of years.
‘I have to take a cortisone supplement every day, but other than that it is fine,’ he says.
HE now lives in Germany where he is an executive with Adidas. His other son, Matthew, is a basketball player of promise. ‘We tried as hard as we could to be hands off. It was obvious Jamie had a good engine and he was only happy when he was active,’ he says.
Jamie was an excellent football player. ‘I winced at some of the tackling he faced. He was slight at 15, 16 in comparison to his opponents, who all seemed to be six foot plus,’ adds his father. The youngster opted for running and is competing in an era of renaissance in Scottish athletics.
‘When I was about, there were just four or five of us who seemed to be competing at the top but there is the strong cadre of a team now,’ Williamson declares.
‘In the last five or six years Scottish athletics has undergone this fantastic turnaround. I am not sure what the catalyst was, frankly I am not close enough to appreciate it all, but people must have been doing something right because these things do not just happen.’
Jamie is now at Loughborough training with his father’s old coach, determined to make the most of his talent.
His father is evangelical about the value of sport. ‘It just gives,’ he says.
The boy from Lenzie has grown into a confident executive and he knows his career in athletics played a part in that.
‘I used to be amazed at how many Scottish international rugby players became successful business people,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
‘If you look at the necessary requirements to be successful, then sport teaches you these traits. It teaches you to be disciplined, to have excellent time management, to be driven, to accept disappointment. You go to a motivation seminar and it is
If you keep looking back then you can’t look forward
just bog-standard coaching. The lessons of athletics resonate beyond sport. You have to be prepared to risk but be confident. Sport gives you that. There is a moment in sport that you have to put it all on the line. It is the same with life.’
It also broadened his experience. His life is in Germany with a sporting behemoth in Adidas but Williamson is aware now that his early years were a good preparation for accepting new challenges.
‘You have to think creatively,’ he says. ‘Running at Springburn Harriers was a great leveller from a class perspective. I was the son of a company secretary from Lenzie and I was running with bricklayers and labourers from Balornock or wherever. We all ran. We all talked to each over 10 miles. I went on holiday to the south of France with the lads and that was interesting for an innocent lad.’
His talent and determination took him to the elite level. This is where the inner warrior is truly revealed. Williamson is a courteous, efficient businessman but the soul of the competitor remains.
‘The most unnerving part is the walk from the warm-up track to the reporting room and then sitting there looking at the guys
you are going to run against for 12-15 minutes,’ he says of major competition.
‘It is very easy to bottle it at that time. It is very easy to say: “I don’t want this”. But once you have been through it a few times, it’s fine. The next time you know it doesn’t matter how it feels, it’s going to be okay.’
The fighting instinct grew stronger as the starting gun was raised. ‘Half the time, being Scottish, it is keeping it under control because we can get carried away easily, not be measured. I would just look around and say to myself: “It is you against me. And I am going to win”.’
He was regularly, gloriously proved right. ‘My old man saw it in me when I was 14, 15 and called it the killer instinct,’ he says.
It may just have run down into another generation.
“I now realise that from 1982 onwards there was something not right. I was dying in races for no apparent reason”