Electronic Telegraph Tuesday 12 September 2000 Tom Knight AFTER winning an Olympic silver medal in Seoul as a 21-year-old, Colin Jackson believed it would only take him another four years to capture the gold. Instead, the 33-year-old Welshman goes into next week's Sydney Olympics still searching for the one title to have eluded him throughout a glittering career. The final hurdle: Colin Jackson prepares for his last assault on Olympic glory in Australia Jackson may be the world's greatest hurdler but his Olympic experience offers a salutary lesson for all those aspiring champions sharing the training track at the British Olympic Association's holding camp here. Nothing should ever be taken for granted. Jackson's best chance of Olympic gold came in Barcelona but after clocking the fastest ever heat time and lining up for the final as outstanding favourite, Jackson's form deserted him and he finished seventh. By 1996, the normally affable Jackson had lost his sparkle, on and off the track, as he struggled to control the spiralling problems which resulted from his disintegrating business partnership with Linford Christie. He finished fourth as the American Allen Johnson won the gold. Jackson said: "I reached a stage in Atlanta where I was beginning to think my time had passed. I even thought I would be retired by 2000." Four years on and the mercurial Jackson has emerged from an injury-hit summer as one of Britain's major hopes in Sydney. His sharpness in training at the Griffith University track is testament to his remarkable transformation after a troubled season. Injuries to his thigh and both hamstrings meant Jackson managed only six races on the European circuit. His fitness was constantly in doubt and with time running out he could have been forgiven for thinking his body might just have given up the ghost after more than 15 years of punishment. But this is the man Britain's performance director, Max Jones, calls "the most professional athlete I have ever met". Repeated visits to the Dublin clinic of physiotherapist Gerard Hartmann and the Munich surgery of Dr Hans Wilhelm Muller-Wolfhardt have put the world champion back on track and with the heats of the 110m hurdles only 12 days away, Jackson looks and feels ready for the fray. For all his problems, he arrived in Australia ranked third in the world after his 13.10sec clocking in Leverkusen last month. He said: "I feel pretty good, my body is in good shape and my mind is getting ready to focus on what I need to do. "I don't feel as if I've had a summer after all my injury problems but I'll go into Sydney 100 per cent fit. Finally, I can genuinely say there are no aches or pains. I haven't felt this good before a championships since the Europeans in 1998." Jackson won then and again the following year when he became the first Briton to regain a world championship title. He still holds the world record of 12.91sec, set in 1993. He added: "I know things are going well when my coach Malcolm Arnold starts getting cautious. He cut a training session short today because things were going so well. You don't like to push it at this stage. "These last few days are a dangerous time because I'm stepping up a gear. When that happens, you tend to try that little bit harder because you want a little bit more. You have to be cautious." Jackson's odds of winning this title shortened last weekend when Johnson pulled up injured at a Grand Prix meeting in Japan. But while Jackson respects Johnson, he regards the Cuban, Anier Garcia, who won the race in Yokohama, as his main threat. "Allen is not the major concern. He ran 12.97 to win the US trials in Sacramento but all of us would have died to have run in those conditions. If he hadn't run quickly there, he would have been in big trouble. "Garcia is the guy. He is the one with the most confidence and he is winning his races. That's why he is the major threat. He runs strongly between the third and seventh hurdle but if you can hang on to him, you can beat him." For Jackson, the performance is everything. His mother, Angela, gets all his medals. "My medals are all at my mum's and some are probably in the loft. They're certainly not at my house. There's no memorabilia there at all. For me, as long as people know I won, that's all that matters. "Bringing home the gold would be the nicest thing because my mother could actually see the medal. There is a certificate for the world record but she doesn't understand how quick that is." Eamonn Condon WWW.RunnersGoal.com
