Now it’s time to deliver medals
His funding cut after injury, GB Olympic hopeful Bramble had to become an Amazon driver, but...
IT WAS an hour after our interview ended that Daniel Bramble spotted the notification on his phone.
We had talked about how this long jumper with Olympic ambitions spent lockdown as an Amazon driver, delivering 250 parcels a day with no toilet breaks and using his skills as a parkour runner to hop over fences in Notting Hill.
We talked about how he missed out on the Rio Games by 1cm and of the injury that denied him that dream. We talked about British Athletics’ decision to cut his funding in 2017.
And we talked about his return to full-time training at Loughborough University and the decision to set up an online GoFundMe donation page to raise the money he needs to make it to Tokyo. ‘I’m a proud man,’ he said. ‘I don’t like asking for help.’ But he knew he needed it.
As we chatted, his page showed a total of £3,125 against a target of £12,000. Not long after, as Bramble sat relaxing the day after his 30th birthday, his phone flashed. He had a notification saying he had reached 100 per cent of his goal.
He opened it up. At the top was the logo for sportswear company Gymshark. He thought at first it was an advert. But then, by their name he saw a number: £ 8,875. Total raised: £12,000 of £12,000.
‘I threw my phone on the floor,’ he said, when I phoned him back. ‘I just didn’t believe it, no way. I picked the phone back up and stared at it for ages.’
He posted a picture on the family WhatsApp. Then on to Twitter, where he had a DM waiting for him. ‘Hey Daniel,’ said the Gymshark account. ‘We wanted to let you know we saw your tweet and were inspired by your story. We knew we had to help you achieve your dream and thought we’d start by making a donation t o your GoFundMe page, so you can quit delivering parcels and get back to delivering gold.’
A few days earlier, Bramble had tweeted a picture of him jumping next to one of him in a hi-vis jacket carrying a pile of parcels. It read: ‘This year really went from “Road to Tokyo” to “At the end of the road turn left”. But you’ve got to adapt or be extinct. Happy to be back jumping again, bring on winter.’ ‘ I’ m still shocked, still blown away,’ he told me. ‘This means I can pay off a few more months of rent in advance, I can go to a warmweather training camp. I can focus on my athletics. I am so thankful.’
But how did it come to this? How did Bramble, a five-time British champion and the fifth-best long jumper in British history, end up delivering parcels?
Growing up, Bramble wanted to be a stunt man. He always loved jumping but did not think he could make a career in athletics until he saw Greg Rutherford win gold at London 2012.
The next year, Bramble got funding from British Athletics. In 2015, he jumped 8.21m in Florida to put him fifth in the all-time British list. ‘Only a few years earlier, I was doing coursework on Greg, saying he was my inspiration. Now, I was in his company.’ He and Rutherford formed GB’s long jump duo at the World Championships in Beijing.
One centimetre is about the width of a staple. Not much, really. For Bramble it was the difference between the realisation and the crushing of his Olympic dream.
The qualification standard was 8.15m. He jumped 8.14 in Oregon at the World Indoor Championships in March 2016. Things looked good.
Then, a few weeks before the Olympic trials, he felt a click in his hip during training. It was a Grade Two groin tear. The injury meant he could not compete. ‘ Getting the phone call and being told that you aren’t going to the Olympics, I just hung up and started crying,’ he recalled. ‘But I used all that sadness and anger to fuel the next year.’ He jumped more than 8m again to win the British Championships.
At the end of the year, British Athletics cut his funding. Suddenly, he was outside the bubble. Not only did he lose that income, about £7,000 to £9,000 a year, but the free physio, the costs of training camps. ‘I know they can’t fund everyone,’ he says. ‘But the athletes that have been at a high level, it’s like they kick them off and disregard them.’
Meanwhile, Bramble knuckled down. He finished fifth at the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
Yet still no funding. And with a pandemic devastating this year’s calendar and no prize- money to compete for, Bramble knew he had to find another way to make ends meet: with a delivery van and a GoFundMe page.
He would start at 9am and finish when all 250 packages had been delivered. Bramble was delivering in Notting Hill. If no one was in, he would hop over the fence to leave them in a safe place. ‘It probably looked a bit dodgy,’ he admits.
With the rescheduled Tokyo Games only nine months away, Bramble decided this was it. He moved up to Loughborough at the start of the year to train with his new coach. He knows what he needs to do.
The Olympic qualification standard is now 8.21m, one centimetre above his current best. He has got until the summer to jump it.
‘I’ve been there before, I know what it feels to go over 8m. I am really hopeful. If I stay healthy, I will be there and I will be competitive for a medal as well.’
Bramble believes in himself, and his GoFundMe page t hat now stands at £14,000 suggests plenty of others do too.