Jodie Williams' coming of age
For as long as Jodie Williams can remember, running has been her world. At the age of 11, she first laced up her shoes and, as she puts it, “just fell into it”. What began as a casual hobby soon evolved into an obsession, one that would take her to the top of the athletics world. After 19-year career marked by international success and its fair share of challenges, however, the three-time Olympian is now stepping away from the sport that has shaped her life.
Her rise was rapid. As a junior, Williams quickly made a name for herself, shattering national age group records – under-15 100m (11.56) and under-17 100m (11.24) and 200m (22.79). From there, she won 100m and 200m gold at the World Youth Championships, following that up with a gold and silver at the World Junior Championships.
By the time she became the European junior champion in 2011, Williams had firmly established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the athletics world, but that environment didn’t merge seamlessly with life away from the track.
While still in school and navigating the pressures of exams, she was also managing the demands of being a world champion. Her success came with a price and one that wasn’t always easy to bear.
“I never felt like I could connect to people my age,” says the 31-year-old. “I would keep athletics very separate from everything else.”
Despite her sporting achievements, there was an almost uncomfortable feeling around sharing them. “I wanted to keep it quiet because I was weirdly embarrassed about it,” she says. “I wanted to be a normal girl and it was really difficult for me to navigate.
“Sometimes I would disappear over summer and I would try not to tell anyone why but people would see the news articles or sometimes film crews came to the school.
“My name had already preceded me before anyone got a chance to get to know me. I was a kid that already didn’t want to be seen so to bring that extra attention to myself was really hard. I was already a very awkward and uncomfortable teenager and it was a really difficult time in my life. The hardest part was trying to stay normal.”
That feeling of being out of place only intensified as Williams moved from the junior to senior ranks. At just 18 years old she was aiming to make her first Olympic Games in London, though pulling up with injury at the trials meant she would have to wait until Rio 2016 to make her first Games.
“Trying to make an Olympic team and transition to a senior role was very overwhelming,” she adds. “When I finished school it was a weight off my shoulders. That transition into the senior ranks is really hard for young athletes.”
The process of making that step up to becoming a senior is a phase that many young athletes struggle with – especially women, who face a unique set of challenges. The pressure to maintain peak performance while navigating natural changes to the body is something that isn’t easy, and often goes unspoken.
“As young girls, we are developing at different times and some girls are very far ahead in their development while others develop much later,” says Williams.
“You are younger competing against fully grown women at that age with so much more knowledge, training years and wisdom than you and it’s difficult to break into that.
“That stage is really difficult but it is a big learning curve. I always looked up to older women and looked at what they were doing and how they navigated it. Every single person at senior level is exceptional at what they do and the playing field eventually levels out a bit.”
But Williams wasn’t just another statistic. Rather than being lost to the sport, through grit and determination she made progress. Her first senior international appearance at the European Indoor Championships in 2011 – where she finished fourth in the 60m – was a sign of things to come.
In 2014, she earned her first senior medals – European 4x100m gold and 200m silver adding to the Commonwealth 200m silver secured in Glasgow earlier that year. Another Commonwealth medal, this time over 400m in Birmingham, arrived in 2022.
That honour underlined Williams’ ability to adapt. In 2019, after years of excelling in the 100m and 200m, she decided to switch to the one-lap event. It was a bold move that, at the time, seemed a risky departure from the distances she loved most. After it became evident in training that she had the engine to compete over a lap, however, it felt like a good move to make.
“I always knew I was made for 400m but I’m a very passionate person and I’m going to go for the event that I love,” says Williams. “The 200m was always my absolute passion so I always pursued that.
“I never had any interest in running the 400m, even though I knew I had a talent for it. I dabbled in it a couple years before the pandemic and I had some time to think. I was becoming disillusioned with the sport and I felt if I didn’t try something new, I was probably not going to continue in the sport for much longer. I thought it would shake things up for me and it definitely did.”
The decision paid off as she reached the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021 and and helped Team GB secure a bronze medal in the women’s 4x400m at the Paris Olympics this summer. After years of hard work, personal growth and overcoming self-doubt, Williams capped her career in a way many athletes dream of – on the Olympic podium.
» This is an abridged version of a longer feature that appears in the December issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here
