As an athlete, the 400m hurdler landed global titles and reached the top. Now, as Matt Majendie discovers, the Welshman is now realising a long-held coaching ambition

The last time Dai Greene applied for a job, it was at his local McDonald’s.

So long ago was it, the former world, Olympic and Commonwealth 400m hurdles champion cannot recall how the interview went or if he in fact even had one. He did, though, land the job flipping burgers and serving customers.

Fast forward nearly 20 years and Greene is sat in one of the offices at Loughborough’s HIPAC, fretting slightly. There is no concern over the coaching element of this particular interview, nor any physiological queries or questions regarding resources.

“It’s funny but the only thing I was concerned about was answering questions about myself and why I was suitable for the job,” he recalls. “I find it a little bit cringe to sell myself.”

We joke he merely had to show off the gold medals from his career, which only ended last summer, to seal the job. But he had already aided his cause by having been working behind the scenes at Loughborough after being called in as a temporary stand-in to help an athlete or two.

Greene likes to think his employees were sufficiently impressed by a coaching prowess shaped by his own former mentors in both Malcolm Arnold and Benke Blomkvist to take a chance on him, despite his relative lack of experience in the field.

He has been relishing life just a few months into his role as head of sprints and hurdles at Loughborough University, overseeing the likes of Alex Haydock-Wilson and Jess Turner among others. It is a coaching journey a long time in the making, with Greene having got his coaching qualifications back in 2008 before he had won any of his global titles on the track.

“I knew, even then, I always wanted to do it,” he says of realising his coaching ambitions more than a decade and a half later. “I’ve always enjoyed helping people in my group, I think I’ve always had a good eye for detail and have seen myself as a mentor to other people around me.”

For the past two years, Greene had dipped his toe in the coaching waters, starting to find his feet as a coach under Mark Goode at Notts AC where he took time to work out what kind of coach he was and wanted to be. That is still a work in progress.

As for what he’s like as a coach, he says: “That’s a good question. I found my persona in that process at Notts AC. I like to think I’m engaging in terms of giving feedback to sort issues and being supportive to the youngsters in particular.

“You need to be able to put your arm around them as a lot of them are just 19 or 20 and need to be told they can achieve great things. Other days, you have to take a harder line when they need to go to the well. It’s a blend of a lot of things.”

Greene insists he hasn’t flicked into angry mode just yet in his coaching role but has taken facets from both of the aforementioned main coaches who moulded his athletics career, as well as the current coaches around him at Loughborough.

Having tried his hand at business ventures as well as the after-dinner speaking circuit as his own sporting career drew to a close, none of the opportunities gave the now 38-year-old the satisfaction that he craved. Coaching, in contrast, has suited him to a tee.

“It’s the only thing that’s really satisfied me,” he says. “I’m excited to get to work with talented athletes each day. Nothing fills the void like competing but watching them achieve things in training they didn’t think they could do is hugely rewarding.”

Greene talks of his own career as split into two parts. There was the one as World, European and Commonwealth champion across 2010 and 2011, then the groin and hip surgery in 2013 which wrote off the next five years. He never fully recaptured his best form and fitness after that.

Despite that, he still plugged away at it until his daughter Eira was born at the end of 2023. Suddenly, the athletics routine and pushing himself in training was no longer the be all and end all.

“I didn’t want to train anymore and think I just needed an excuse to stop,” he says. “As soon as she [Eira] came along, she became far more important. I’m glad I tried as long as I did and there are no regrets, but I needed something else to come along.”

The past year has had its ups and downs, Eira born with a rare genetic disorder called Noonan syndrome. Alarm bells rang when she didn’t grow in the first three months despite feeding well, and it took months and spells in hospital to get a diagnosis.

“It hasn’t been an easy 12 months or so, and she’s a bit slower to develop than others,” says Greene. “She could have anything ranging from learning difficulties to heart issues and might grow up with no problems at all. Some people with it need carers and some don’t even know they’ve got it.”

It was during a stint in hospital with his daughter that his Loughborough coaching journey began. An athlete called him to ask if he could help coach them, which turned into two and then gradually expanded as word spread. That in turn spawned his current job where he currently has 10 athletes under his charge.

Eira came close to arriving in the company of two other former world champions Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Andrew Pozzi after the couple were visiting Greene and his partner Jess on the farm where they live. It had been a rare chance for the four of them to have a get together outside of the season for a session of board games.

“Jess had been a bit ill and we thought it was Braxton Hicks fake labour contractions,” Greene recalls. “She went upstairs as she wasn’t feeling great, and we all kept on playing. Then she was sick so we called the hospital to ask what that meant. They told us the baby was on the way.

“So, it was a case of: ‘Sorry guys, off you go’. Sure enough, we messaged them three hours later to tell them we had a baby!”

As for his own running career, Greene looks back on it with no regrets despite the injury struggles of the past decade and being unable to emulate the glory years of 2010 and 2011.

“I would have had regrets if I’d nipped it in the bud sooner,” he says. “But it was a lot of fight, fight and then fall short.”

Even now, he cannot quite shake off the former athlete in him when training his young charges, competing against them in certain tests and, much to his amusement, still setting the benchmark in at least one.

And he knows that, when the season gets under way, there will still be slight pangs for his former past. “I’ll miss being out there myself,” he admits, “but I don’t think that’ll last long. I’m just looking forward to being in my athletes’ corner when they head to competitions.”