Brussels – The travelling Willis family of five is down to two but don’t expect the man for whom the tour group was built to be the weaker for its dispersal here tomorrow. Nick Willis has already achieved his goal this season - an Olympic 1500m medal - but now he wants more.

Striking back against the domination of his event by African-born athletes in four successive Olympics, Willis claimed the bronze for New Zealand in Beijing. An athlete happier with his achievement would be hard to find.

“If I were to get hit by a car tomorrow, I would have felt like I had fulfilled a huge amount of my dreams as an athlete,” Willis said today, reflecting on his Olympic podium effort. And the self-belief he has gained as a result could see him improve his national record in the Belgacom Memorial Van Damme meeting tomorrow.

On the eve of the final stop in the 2008 ÅF Golden League tour, the 25-year-old Willis added: “This meet here is a great opportunity to go after a fast time and experience what it is like to run in a really fast paced race. I would like to seize this opportunity to build on a great season.”

In 2005, Willis broke the New Zealand record which had been in John Walker’s keep for 30 years, improving the mark to 3:32.17 in 2006. In 2007 he was unable to break 3:35 but, shortly before the Olympics, at the Herculis World Athletics Tour meeting in Monaco, he ran a season’s best 3:33.51 to go to Beijing confident.

There, in China, Willis ran an astute tactical race to place third in 3:34.21 behind Bahrain’s Moroccan-born Rashid Ramzi (3:32.94) and Kenya’s Asbel Kiprop (3:33.11).

Travelling community

“I had the best race of my life, on that day of the final,” Willis said. “Tactically, you’ve got to have a lot of things fall your way but I took advantage of the opportunities and executed those well.

“Physically, I was less than 2sec off my best ever time so, to do that in my third race in five days, in the heat of Beijing in a tactical race, which was stop-and-fast, stop-and fast, with a really fast last 300m - all of that tells me that’s the best shape I have ever been in and that all of the year’s planning had paid off.”

And what a feat of planning it was. It involved not only Willis but his wife, Sierra, his brother, Steve, his sister-in-law, Caro, and his niece, Bella. Steve, a 3:40 1500m runner, was needed as a training partner and coaching advisor while Sierra, Caro and Bella joined the team to give family and spiritual support.  

“There were five of us together for 8 months,” Willis explained. “They (Caro and Bella) just gave up their community in Lower Hutt (New Zealand) but Steve left his teaching job to come over.” They based themselves in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Nick and Sierra live, and travelled from there as needs dictated. 

“The main thing I needed was to feel as though I was not having to make decisions on my own,” Willis said. “My coach at the University of Michigan could not leave the team very often so, when I needed to get away from the winter, get away from the snow, when I was travelling to meets, there was somebody to help carry out my coach’s orders. It meant there was a little less weighing on my shoulders.

“Having my brother there, someone with a very similar faith to me, along with Sierra and Caro, meant that we had a community there where we would try to make group decisions about when we would travel, where we would travel, what races we would do. Ideally that those decisions were aligned to what we felt God was calling us to do through our Bible studies.

“That’s one of the tough things when you are on the road all the time – you are away from your church or your community. Having a travelling community meant that it wasn’t nearly as exhausting as it might be when you are on the road.

“There is only so much planning you can do and the rest is ‘I hope it works out’. But I truly believe that my medal is evidence that God has had a huge hand in my life.

“Steve, his wife and baby have gone back to New Zealand now. Steve was in Beijing but Cara and Bella were not. Now Sierra and I have continued. Rather than return to the States, we felt that I was in the best shape of my life. Sierra was a huge part in that.

“Often I have struggled to keep motivated racing and training after a championship but, having my wife with me, encouraging me and just being there, has made me stay excited for racing. Yes, we’re looking forward to going home but these are amazing opportunities.

Always top three

“I was hugely satisfied with Beijing. Whether it’s gold, silver or bronze, getting a medal at the Olympic Games is the pinnacle of everything you dream of as a kid, of why you take part in an Olympic sport. I always knew I was capable and had the physical ability but, to put it all together, is a dream come true. It has made a great career almost complete already. Now all I have got to do is shoot for the very top.

“This opens a huge amount of doors in terms of how I view myself and my belief – the confidence it instils after experiencing being at the top of the world in the Olympic Games. It’s quite phenomenal and it translates into a more aggressive, confident style of racing.”

Although Willis is hoping to run a national record tomorrow he added that his primary goal was to win. “I am yet to finish outside the top three in a 1500 or mile race this season so I would like to keep that run going,” he said. “But I am yet to win a race as well so I would really like a victory.
 
“I’m looking forward to getting my nose stuck in there and being competitive because it is really tough coming to the Golden League races before the Olympics. You have got that in the back of your mind so your training has to be geared towards keeping your mileage up and your hard workouts going.

“You are always heading into those races slightly tired whereas now, after the Olympics, I am able to freshen up in the days leading up to it. So I am actually not dreading the fatigue in my quadriceps and hamstrings like I normally do.”

David Powell for the IAAF