DALEY Thompson believes that Britain’s athletes will truly hit their stride in four years’ time in Los Angeles, but the decathlon legend is backing Team GB’s women to star on the track in Paris this summer.
Thompson won back-to-back decathlon gold medals in 1980 and 1984, one of just four multiple gold medallists in athletics for Team GB since the second World War, alongside his good friend Lord Sebastian Coe, Kelly Holmes, and Sir Mo Farah.
Britain will head to Paris with a pair of reigning world champions – heptathlon star Katarina Johnson-Thompson and 1500m gold medallist Josh Kerr.
And with sprint queens Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita, as well as 800m standout Keely Hodgkinson and pole vault indoor world champion Molly Caudery, all looking like medal contenders, Thompson expects Britain’s female athletes to rule the roost.
He said: “I think if truth be told, athletics is going through one of those phases where we don’t have a lot of winners, but at the moment, it seems we are getting a lot of people going from semi-finals to finals.
“It maybe one Olympics too early for us to be thinking about winning four or five gold medals, but I think we’ll have a lot of people starting to make finals and if they can keep it going for three or four years, then we’ll do really well in Los Angeles.
“One of the interesting things is that most of our better athletes these days seem to be the ladies which is fabulous.
“Dina is coming along and Daryll Neita seems to be running well. Keely will obviously there as well. Molly Caudery looked fantastic indoors and she got the bronze at the Europeans. She will probably be disappointed with that because she was the best in the field but it’s all about experience. It’s all new to her. With any luck in Paris, she might get onto that rostrum.”
At the European Championships in Rome, Johnson-Thompson was forced to withdraw with a niggle in her right leg.
That is a concern with less than two months before the opening ceremony for Paris, as she looks to add an Olympic medal having made the podium in every other major event.
And for Thompson, the challenge will be mental, as much as physical.
He added: “It’s a concern, even if it’s not a physical thing. The mental thing of having to pull out in front of everybody, it’s not a good look. Hopefully, it is something physical and she can get through it. She’s one of our main hopes for winning something.
“In all the Olympic sports, one of the great things and one of the terrible things about it is that we all know in Paris on July 26, everybody in the whole world knows that is when it starts.
“You have got that clock ticking loudly or not quite so loudly in your head all the time. With only eight weeks to go, you have got to be thinking the positive stuff. You don’t want negative stuff in your head. That is why we love it because it is difficult, and those mental things really do come into it.”
Thompson was speaking part of Get Shingles Ready, a campaign by GSK alongside fellow Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave.
And while Thompson has remained fit and healthy since retiring from athletics, the 65-year-old was keen to stress the importance of healthy ageing and proactive approaches to help prevent illness as we get older – including regular exercise, eating healthily, and taking up adult vaccinations when individuals become eligible for them via NHS vaccination programmes.
He added: “I really think that as I’m getting older as a person, I’m not as athletic as I was. I feel so many people out there must be finding it a lot more difficult than I was and I like to do a bit of help and send good messages out to people.
“Once I stopped being a professional, I was doing a little bit of coaching, joining in once in a while. You taper right down and now I take a few classes, nearly every single day I have a friend or two who comes in and we talk while he exercises. Even now, some days I don’t want to do stuff. So, I can completely understand if ordinary people can’t get into it. But Steve and I would suggest that if they want to do it, they find other people to do it with, because that it is a great motivation, and don’t try to do the same stuff all the time, you want as much variety as possible.”
Get Shingles Ready is a campaign by GSK supported by Steve Redgrave and Daley Thompson. For more information visit GetShinglesReady.co.uk
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