British sprinter embraces role of GB captain as European Indoor Champs as she tackles the 400 metres

In the countdown to the Tokyo Olympics, sprinter Jodie Williams is taking herself out of the comfort zone. She has just endured her first British winter for about five years as she prepares to move up from 200m to 400m at this week’s European Indoor Championships in Poland. What’s more, being GB team captain means she had to deliver a speech to her team-mates ahead of the action in Toruń.

The 27-year-old has trained at the Altis centre in the United States in recent years but found herself stranded in the UK last summer due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

“I did my first winter in the UK for five years,” she says. “It was an experience for me as I forgot how cold it can get but it did mean I could get back to a more traditional way of training for me. This is probably why I’ve focused more on the 400m for this indoors (season) as it involves a lot of heavier work due to the weather.”

However, she did experience some warm-weather training in the end when she enjoyed a spell of work in Dubai at the start of this year. “I was really fortunate to have that opportunity and I got some good quality work out there which allowed me to really give indoors a go,” she explains. “Initially I hadn’t planned to come to this championships but things fell into place and I thought I could give it a go.”

Williams has barely raced indoors in recently years but describes Toruń as “the perfect stepping stone” for an Olympics during what should be, in theory, her peak period as a senior athlete.

After running 52.27 to win the British trials at 400m in Manchester last month, she finds herself in one of the highest-quality events of the championships this weekend with the favourite being Dutch sprints and hurdles sensation Femke Bol.

For Williams, though, she is gaining endurance and championship experience ahead of probably dropping down to her specialist 200m event this summer.

“I’m still a 200m runner,” she says. “I don’t enjoy the 400m but sometimes we have to do things we don’t enjoy, so here we are. I’m giving it a go and trying something new.

“Obviously I have some form of talent in this area (400m) so I’m going to see what I can do. Because I didn’t race last year at all it’s just a good opportunity to get back into the flow of racing.”

The Herts Phoenix athlete certainly isn’t short of experience. A prodigious teenage athlete she won world under-18 titles at 100m and 200m in 2009 followed by world under-20 gold at 100m in 2010 and European under-20 titles at 100m and 200m in 2011.

That same year, in 2011, she finished fourth in the 60m at the European Indoor Championships in Paris and now, 10 years later, she returns to race over 400m as GB captain.

“This is my 10-year anniversary since I made a senior British team for the first time,” she says. “The European Indoors was my first senior championships. It is cool that it has all come full circle and I am now going to be team captain.”