Teenager inspired by Olympics on TV
Ujah enjoyed a meteoric rise after deciding to take up athletics when he saw Usain Bolt in the lead-up to London 2012
It was in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics that CJ Ujah first clapped eyes on his idol. The Londoner was a mere teenager as he watched Usain Bolt rock up to the Lee Valley athletics track, and he instantly recalled the Jamaican’s world record-breaking 100metres performance in Beijing four years earlier.
“When I wasn’t doing the sport in 2008, I watched the Olympics on TV when Bolt was slapping his chest and crossing the line,” Ujah said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2017. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I want to take up athletics’. Every year since, I’ve grown and I feel I belong now. I don’t see anyone above me. I wanted to take a picture of him, obviously, but I’ve moved on.”
As he tries to come to terms with his suspension for alleged doping offences, those days of youthful bravado must seem a long time ago.
Ujah’s ban is a body blow to British Athletics, given his status within the sport.
The sprinter enjoyed a meteoric rise on the British sprinting scene. Born and raised in Enfield to parents of Nigerian heritage, he had been tipped for success from a young age and counted Commonwealth Youth Games silver and a European title among his accolades as a junior.
He underlined his potential at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Barcelona, only to find himself upstaged by fellow Briton Adam Gemili who, like Ujah, arrived at the Tokyo Games searching for his first Olympic medal.
Despite his teenage accomplishments, Ujah was relatively unknown outside British sprinting circles. Few would have predicted him to join the sub-10 club before Gemili.
Bursting onto the scene as a 20-year-old, he broke the 10-second barrier in the 100 metres in 2014, posting a time of 9.96sec at the FBK Games in Holland. In doing so, he became only the fifth Briton to accomplish the feat at the time.
Many did not anticipate his breakthrough as a senior would come so soon. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he has a knack for surrounding himself with the right people. In his formative years, the 2012 Olympic long-jump champion, Greg Rutherford, was his trusted training partner at Lee Valley. It instilled the sort of winning mentality that would see Ujah claim the 2017 Diamond League 100m title in Zurich, where he pipped Justin Gatlin, then the world champion, in what many still view as his career milestone. Since switching his training base to Phoenix, Arizona, Ujah has steadily developed under the eye of renowned sprint coach Stuart Mcmillan, and can name Canadian star Andre de Grasse, the 200m champion at Tokyo, among his latest colleagues.
Like most athletes, injury has been a feature of his career. He was forced to pull out of the 2019 World Championships in Doha with a back problem, a further disappointment to add to the semi-final heartache that has seemingly defined him. In Rio – the first Olympics where he pitted himself against his role model Bolt – he missed out on the final of the 100m by 0.01 seconds and befell a similar fate at his home World Championships the following year.
He has enjoyed better fortunes in the 4x100m relay, having played his part in helping Britain to back-toback European titles in 2016 and 2018, and a gold at the World Championships in London.
Ahead of his second Olympics, the 27-year-old began to incorporate meditation into his daily routine, alongside listening to audiobooks and podcasts about sporting greats.
“I listen to podcasts on how Kobe Bryant and Lebron James prepared for their major games, plus an audiobook called ‘Mindful Compassion’ which looks at Zen Buddhism and meditation, which is helping me remain calm,” he told
last month. “I meditate every morning and I spend a lot of time praying.”