Jodie Williams: The Newest Track Star to Emerge from England
With the 2012 London Olympics only two years away, England seems to have found a bright young talent in the field of running. Jodie Williams is only 16 years old and already she is setting the women's athletics world on fire. She was unbeaten for an incredible 151 races and had looked all set to win everything under the sun. Her story is an interesting one because of the fact that she is just 16 years old and she will be maturing very soon and her body will change, so it will be a tough few years for her ahead. Even with all the pressure of everything going on around her, she looks all set to become the next big name in athletics for Britain.
Jodie Williams started running at the tender age of 11, and she showed some serious promise even at that age. She was unbeaten in every running event she had ever raced in since the age of 11, until she was beaten very recently at the World Junior Championships in the 200m. She has slowly been improving her performance at running but she has a serious workload going on at the same time. Being a full time student as well, she has just sat for 8 GCSEs. Her friends at school have dubbed her ‘Moneylegs’ and she truly deserves the nickname.
There is a lot of talk about her training regime at the moment and whether she will be able to compete against senior runners. A lot of talented young runners who peaked too fast and jumped age groups too early on in their careers did not compete into their 20s. Williams’ coach Mike McFarlane, who has coached several young runners to promising careers when they were older, is all too aware of this problem. The problem is the fact that Williams’ body will be changing in the next two years and the coach will be monitoring her performance throughout this transition phase. As he does not want her to burn out before she has even had a chance to peak, Jodie is only limited to three training sessions a week and only light weight training as well. The most interesting part of it all is the fact that if with only three training sessions a week she is this good, what will happen when she gets up to a full training load later on. She is all set to up the training regiment in preparation for next summer's World Championships in preparation for the Olympics in 2012.
On Friday, the young runner tasted defeat for the first time in her career. Having stretched her unbeaten record to an unbelievable 151 wins, she was beaten in the 200m race by American Stormy Kendrick. If what happened was to be dissected then we would find a story of exhaustion. Jodie had been trying to be the first athlete to make a clean sweep of the 100m race and the 200m race at two consecutive events. She managed to win both the 100m and 200m races at last year's World Junior Championships and during this year's Championships she managed to win the 100m race and it seems that exhaustion crept up on her before her 200m race. She could not get to sleep until very late the night of her 100m win because of excitement, and then was absolutely shattered at training the next day. She slept for 12 hours that night and was not in perfect running condition on race day. Even though she lost, she was only 0.20 seconds behind the winner.
The future looks very bright for this amazing young talent. She could be the future of women's athletics in Britain and looks all set to make her mark at the 2012 Olympic Games. She just has to be careful that she does not burn out prematurely and goes the way of a lot of talented young stars before her. She should maintain her path at the moment of not competing against senior runners, and gradually work her way up. We should all be on the lookout for this bright runner in the next few years.
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