Colin Jackson: The final hurdle

After 18 years at the top of athletics, Colin Jackson has hung up his spikes. And there are a few things - like that bust-up with Linford Christie, and the truth about his sexuality - that he'd like to get off his chest. Interview by Nick Duerden

Colin Jackson cannot remember the last time he went to the cinema. "The cinema? No way!" he mock-shrieks, bringing a hand to his mouth as it breaks out into a mile-wide smile. (The man, incidentally, is consummately camp. When he giggles, and he giggles often, he resembles a panto dame.) "The seats in those places are terrible! Your back would ache and you'd probably do damage to your hamstrings." He shakes his head exaggeratedly. "No, nooo! Too much risk. The upkeep of my body is all, it's everything."

One of the greatest British athletes of all time, Jackson is retired now, of course, but old habits die hard. Cinema continues to be the pastime of other people, of regular folk. If he wants to be sociable, he eats a banana, thereby missing the point entirely. But then throughout his very full 18 years as a world-class hurdler - for which Jackson proudly holds numerous records - he remained almost terrifyingly disciplined. This was a man, for example, who never got drunk, who never greedily gorged on a kebab at three o'clock in the morning only to regret it come daybreak. He never took a day off, never once veered from his strict diet. When he was thirsty, he would avoid water because of the bloating sensation water can cause. Instead, he would chew on a vegetable. In fact, he admits now, he was border-line anorexic. The way he tells it, he very rarely even had sex. Poor, poor fellow.

"To succeed you have to be strong, aware and totally selfish," he proclaims. "Believe me, the mind can be a very powerful tool, and it's this," he says, tapping at his temples, "that separates your everyday medal contenders from actual winners. You need huge levels of discipline to become a worldbeater." His face becomes scarily intense. "Let's put it another way. There are - what? - something like 5 billion people in the world. You, as a journalist, have no idea whether you are one of the very best writers, do you?" Well, I tell him, I could hazard a guess. "Sure, anyway. But I know that I was one of the best athletes, one of the very best, on the entire planet. See? The discipline is worth it because the rewards are massive."

Jackson's final race was at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham back in March of this year. He wanted to exit at the very top of his game; he yearned to win. "I'm in great shape at the moment," he said at the time, "[and] I'm looking forward to winning my next medal."

As it transpired, he finished fifth. Once, this would have left him devastated, crushed, a shadow of his former self. But despite initial disappointment, the 36-year-old was finally learning acceptance.

"My first reaction was to find another race so I could finish my career properly," he admits. "I've been competitive all my life, so it's difficult to go out on a whimper. But I had been gradually aware for a while that my competitive streak was no longer as strong as it once was. Yes, I'd lost my last race, but I was still among the top five in the world, and that's no mean feat."

Retiring from sport, he says, "felt like the most natural thing in the world".

As is common practice for leading sportsmen and women these days, Colin Jackson has just published his autobiography. It's a swift, impressive read, and glory spills from its pages. In it, he talks about the friendships he made, his poor girlfriend who always came second place in his affections - silver to the gold of hurdling, if you like - and the bitter feud with fellow athlete Linford Christie, former teammate and friend who, after their business foundered, became his enemy. He talks of all the medals accrued (25 major championship gongs) and the records set (seven European, eight Commonwealth and nine UK, all at 110m). And he obsesses over time. Seconds, in his world, were of crucial importance, and he reels them off here endlessly. For instance, back in August 1993, at the Outdoor World Championship in Stuttgart, he completed the 110m hurdles in 12.91 seconds, .02 seconds faster than anybody else, ever. A year later, at the European Indoor Championships in Sindelfingen, Germany, he ran the 60m hurdles in 7.30 seconds. Both times remain unbeaten, and it is these that send him to sleep happy at night.

Growing up in the Seventies in one of Cardiff's newest neighbourhoods, the young Colin shared his enthusiasm for watching athletics with his Jamaican-born father, but early on had decided to become an electrician. By the time he turned 14, however, he had joined the local junior athletes group, and had enrolled the services of a personal coach who pushed him as hard as he would one day push himself. Within four years, he was getting better results than everybody else. He won his first gold medal at 19, and this would set the pace for the next two decades of his life. Where many athletes peak early, Jackson proved remarkably consistent. Only injury, he says now, prevented him from dominating every event he entered.

"Most of the time, people had no idea I was even injured in the first place because I still took part," he shrugs. It was injury that held him back at the 1992 Olympics, limping in at seventh place when he was expected to scoop gold. And his poor showing in Atlanta in 1996 was down to illness. "Basically, every time I came fourth or fifth in a race instead of first or second was because I was hurting somewhere. I never stopped running even when I should have been recuperating, and that was a mistake because a top-class athlete cannot perform to the best of his ability at 97 per cent."

He shakes his head, looks at his feet and seems thoroughly miserable. Clearly, these failures trouble him still.

Colin Jackson's athletic life was almost monastic. He lived for those 13 seconds on f the track, his existence devoted to discipline, regiment and training, whatever the cost to his personal life. "I guess you could say," he grins, "that I had a one-track mind."

And he's not talking about sex. For many years, Jackson's peers misinterpreted his reluctance to socialise, to party, as a sign of his closet homosexuality. There were, they thought, several tell-tale signs: he was theatrical, a perennial giggler, and an insatiable gossip; the girlfriend he claimed was waiting at home was never seen; and he remained intensely private.

"Everybody always thought I was gay because I never played around, and that's very rare in my world because, believe me, everybody else did," he says. "Nobody could understand it. Here I was, number one in the world, in some exotic location. I could have had [girls] flocking to my room. But I never did. I simply wouldn't allow it."

Presumably, I suggest, this was for fear of sapping his strength, just like the boxer who won't have sex the night before a big fight.

"I can honestly say that I have no idea whether sex does ruin your performance, because I've never had sex before a race. Never." He gives a hollow laugh. "That's just how I am. I was so focused on the run that sex would be the last thing on my mind."

In the ferociously competitive world of sport, discipline is of course paramount, but Jackson's behaviour here was a little extreme. Even David Beckham, whose commitment to footballing excellence is obvious, found the time to co-create two new lives.

"I don't think I've missed out on anything, though," he insists, blissfully oblivious to anything but his own reality. "Except perhaps a sense of enjoyment. I pushed myself so hard throughout my career that I never stopped to appreciate any of my achievements. Even when I did well in a race, I wanted to do better the next time. Obviously that's not the best way to go about having a happy life, and it's only now, having written the book, that I can reflect on that."

Real life did, occasionally, manage to penetrate through all the discipline, and it is these episodes in his autobiography that best serve to humanise this most focused of athletes. He was plunged into depression, and his form faltered, in 1999 when his best friend and hurdling prodigy Ross Baillie died, suddenly, of a nut allergy. Jackson had been on the phone to a mutual friend when the tragic accident occurred. He could hear Baillie coughing in the background, moments after swallowing a single mouthful of a coronation chicken sandwich which, it later transpired, had traces of nut in it. At the time, Jackson was oblivious to the severity of the situation. "Tell him to shut up," he told his friend, "I can't hear what you're saying." Twenty minutes later, Baillie was rushed to hospital in a coma. Four days later, he was dead. "I wandered about in a daze," he says now. "Nothing made sense any more." Nevertheless, within a month he was winning again, doing so, he says, in his friend's memory.

And then there was the time, back in 1992, when he allowed close friend Linford Christie to convince him that they should set up a sports management company together. Jackson had never previously permitted anything to interfere with his running, but Christie, who was coming to the end of his career and was keen to branch out, was persuasive. Nuff Respect was, effectively, created to exploit their success, and to make them lots of money. But within a couple of years their relationship had begun to sour.

"We didn't work well together at all," he says. "I was more thoughtful than Linford, I had more direction, and I wasn't so backward-thinking as he was. Basically, he wasn't in touch with reality at all, and, as far as I could see, the business to him was all about ego and becoming a superstar. I wasn't interested in that."

In the book's most candid chapter, Jackson details the former friends' slow descent into purgatory with a certain amount of relish. As painted by Jackson, Christie was headstrong but blind, a virtual megalomaniac, and a clueless chairman. By 1997, Jackson wanted out in order to re-focus solely on his hurdling. He explained this to Christie and Christie was, initially at least, sympathetic. But when it came to splitting the business's assets, according to Jackson, he became awkward, then difficult, then impossible. He wouldn't turn up to meetings, refused to answer calls or return messages.

"And this went on for months - months!" Jackson says, shaking his head. "I couldn't understand why he was being so annoying - so childish. All I wanted to do was move on - you know, let me go, please."

Eventually he managed to pin Christie down. They spoke on the phone, and the conversation was civil. They arranged to meet the following day at the office to which only the latter had keys; the former would collect his things; they would part with their friendship bruised but ultimately intact.

"And what happened? He never showed, he just left me standing. I was livid, I was so, so ... furious that I was ready to kill. And I came to a decision, not a rational one but one I was fully prepared to go ahead with. I was going to torch the place, set it on fire and play Linford at his own childish games. See how he liked it."

At which point, he says now, fate intervened. On the steps of the office were two young mothers with prams, deep in conversation. Unwilling to commit arson within the clear view of witnesses, Jackson impatiently waited for them to leave. But they continued chatting, and eventually he walked away. He then decided to hit Christie another way, and cleared the company's joint bank account of all the money he believed he was owed - in total, £55,000. Christie was furious, and, says Jackson, subsequently attempted to tarnish his name within the athletics community.

"I ran into him just last week actually," Jackson says, grinning victoriously. "It was at an athletics function in Zurich, in public, so he couldn't ignore me. But he looked at me with this really angry face. He's still convinced I wronged him somehow."

The pair have yet to build bridges.

"I hope he reads the book, but I reckon seeing it all down in black and white will horrify him because, come on, nobody wants to read those kind of things about themselves, do they? Don't get me wrong, I'm not harbouring grudges, I just said what needed to be said. Deep down, Linford's a good guy and he knows the score. If he came to my house, I'd invite him in for coffee. 'Course I would."

So what now for Colin Jackson? Well, in addition to the obligatory dabble in sports commentary, he wants to produce documentaries for television, and has even written a film script, which his good friend Duncan Kenworthy (producer of Four Weddings and a Funeral) will cast an eye over when ready. But his biggest hope is that, with a life of discipline at last behind him, he will become something of an ordinary guy. In the book's final pages, he writes: "Perhaps I will sort something out in my private life, too. Perhaps things might blossom again with girlfriend Sam. You never know."

And have they?

Jackson kicks back his heels and hoots with nervous laughter. "I wouldn't want that kind of pressure just yet, to be honest, because the next step for us would have to be a ring on the finger, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I need to be happy with myself before I can make anybody else happy. And I know that before I settle down to a life of responsibility," he says, giggling again, his voice a high-pitched squeak, "I want to play!" E

'Colin Jackson, the Autobiography' is published by BBC Books, priced £17.99