‘I didn’t particularly like my younger self ’
As Colin Jackson prepares to return to the BBC, he tells Guy Kelly about how his life has changed since retiring from the track
Sitting across from Colin Jackson in a Cardiff café, it is just about impossible to believe the former Olympian is 51. That’s three years older than Jacob Rees-mogg, I think to myself, the same age as Kellyanne Conway. Yet there Jackson sits, resplendent in a tracksuit, sipping on a latte, looking younger, healthier and happier than ever. What’s his secret?
“You need to give yourself a fighting chance on this planet,” he says, somewhat morbidly. “Health, fitness and cooking good food for yourself are the few things in life that we get the total benefit from. So I eat well and do some form of exercise every day.”
Jackson says “some form”, but when I drill down into the details of his age-defying regime, he actually means three-hour evening bike rides in the countryside around his Vale of Glamorgan home, daily hill sprints so early it’s often still dark (“Sometimes, I go back to bed after, but it’s the best way to wake up!”) and fasted walks – cardio before breakfast, many nutritionists believe burns fat much quicker than going out post-porridge. Rees-mogg probably isn’t doing those.
It has been 15 years since Jackson ended his professional sporting career, yet even after the successes of London and Rio, he remains one of our greatest-ever athletes. Between 1986 and 2002, he won two World Championship golds, four European Championships, two Commonwealth golds, an Olympic silver and held the 110m hurdles world record for a remarkable 13 years. “It was more than just running and jumping for me, it was an artistic event. If you jump the hurdle by 1cm, it’s too high. 0.5cm? Just right. 1.5cm? It feels as if you’ve gone over a mountain. I always loved that side of it, getting it just right.”
These days, Jackson mainly works in Cardiff, having moved back four years ago after more than two decades in London. He lives alone, near where he grew up, and has family in the region, including his sister, former Casualty actress Suzanne Packer. The pair present a weekend show for BBC Radio Wales, and their parents, Angela and Ossie, were first-generation Jamaican immigrants, arriving in 1955 and 1961 respectively. (In an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Jackson discovered he was descended from Taino Indians, the native inhabitants of Jamaica.)
“There were plenty of black and mixed-race families around Cardiff in the Eighties, so we never had any issues. A lot of my friends in London went through hell in comparison.” He and his parents attended Windrush 70th anniversary events at Parliament. “It’s important we recognise that generation weren’t a burden on the nation but contributed to its success. Britain should be proud of extending the invitation, rather than resist that.”
Jackson pursued athletics on leaving school, but also began an apprenticeship as an electrician. “I wanted to know how to wire a house – which is actually kind of easy. I was working with a construction company from 8am until 4pm, then athletics training in Cwmbran until 8pm, getting home near 10, then doing it all again. It was tough,” he says. Something had to give. His parents offered to support him from 1984 to 1988, when he’d turn 21. He’d be free to have a go at the running and jumping thing, he reasoned, and still be young enough to go back to education. It worked out. “At the end of that four years, I was an Olympic medallist, a Commonwealth medallist, World Junior Champion…” Athletics became his life; he loved it, but didn’t always like it.
“It was the only thing that mattered to me, and that can have a negative effect. You are never pleasant or sociable, everything is revolving around you not being too tired, or getting places on time. If I look back on [my younger self ], I didn’t particularly like him. I remember the day I retired, telling my mum: ‘You know I’ll never be angry again, right?’ She just laughed. She knew I was a pig back then.”
There was a time when he “hated” athletics, when he probably should have loved it most – after breaking the 110m hurdles world record in 1993.
“You break a world record and then you plateau. You know you won’t get any better, so you’re training for improvement but you know it’s not coming. People expect more and more, but you just can’t be bothered.”
By the time of his retirement in 2003, it was clear he would go on to have a broadcasting career. But there was also a lot of speculation about his private life around that time. He was gay, the rumours went, and the tabloids seemed desperate to out him.
It was not an era in which gay athletes were common; just a few years previously, Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay footballer, took his own life, and twice Jackson publicly denied it – in his 2004 autobiography, and then in a 2008 newspaper interview. Last year, though, he revealed his sexuality in an interview for the Swedish documentary Rainbow Heroes, believing it would no longer be “sensationalised”.
In it, he told Swedish high jumper Kajsa Bergqvist that he came out to his parents in 2006, when the News of the World published a kiss-and-tell story from a male air steward.
“It didn’t faze them at all,” he told Bergqvist. “My mum went: ‘First of all, is the story true?’ I said it’s true, so it’s not like I can deny it. And then she went: ‘Well, why are people so disgraceful?’ I just realised, I’ve got the best parents.”
Today, he isn’t keen to elaborate further. “I always find it interesting. People really want to ask me about it. I can see it, and they always think I’ll say: ‘I dunno…’”
Did his team-mates know, all that time? “Yeah, I thought so. I was a champion, though, so I was focusing on that,” before adding: “There were no distractions for me.”
He enjoys living alone and staying busy, rather than telling his story again. “I always feel it’s nobody else’s business. I don’t talk about anything like that, because for me it has no relevance to what I was doing as a runner or a broadcaster. I’m still the same person from two years ago.”
‘You need to give yourself a fighting chance on this planet’
He is indeed, and will be back broadcasting for the BBC at the new-look European Championships next month. British athletics is in a period of transition, it seems. With England’s football team back in our affections, is the track-and-field golden age over?
“Every sport has a cycle, so we can’t be good all the time. But we’ll always get people that want to get involved, which means new names, new champions.”
Some of those are lucky enough to receive Jackson’s wisdom directly, thanks to his work with charities and educational organisations. He recently hosted the Qube Awards, which celebrates apprentices and trainees. What’s the gist of his shtick?
“I tell them to never give up, or take no for an answer. In life, you get rejected more than you get accepted, and you have to understand that. So you have to invest in yourself and work hard.”
It sounds like we could all do worse than get a life coaching session from Colin Jackson. Especially if he threw in his anti-ageing tips.