News01 Jun 2007


Nicola Sanders ready for new challenges

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Nicola Sanders after her 50.02 victory in Birmingham (© Getty Images)

Following a superb 400 metres final at the recent European Indoor Championships, 25-year-old Nicola Sanders has positioned herself as one of the latest wonders of the women’s one-lap race. By Steve Landells

They say an athlete often learns more in defeat than in victory and this fact is very true of Nicola Sanders. The scene of the defeat was the cavernous Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 2006 and the British athlete had just finished a gut-wrenching fourth in the Commonwealth Games 400m Hurdles final.

At that point with her mind scrambled, devastated to miss out on a medal she was unable to comprehend its significance.

But in the cold light of day, and in wake of the defeat, it became clear to the young British athlete her future lay in a different event. Injuries had persistently restricted her hurdle training and she had shown glimpses of exciting form in the 400m flat – which included a 50.72 indoor clocking earlier that year.

With this in mind and while preparing for the outdoor season in Florida she made what could prove a career-defining decision – she ditched the hurdles in favour of the flat.

More than 12 months on from the misery of Melbourne the event switch appears a wise one. Sanders has just enjoyed a incredible breakthrough this winter - winning the European Indoor 400m title and finishing world No.1 for the distance indoors with a time of 50.02. She appears on the cusp of something special and many believe she is capable of lowering Kathy Cook’s 23-year-old British record of 49.43.

But while Sanders dismisses such speculation the slenderly-built Brit believes with the benefit of hindsight she started to feel uncomfortable over hurdles at the Commonwealth Games.

“I had injuries leading up to the worlds in Helsinki and I was still managing this problem in Melbourne,” said Sanders. “I said to my mum after the rounds at the Commonwealths I had so much running left the hurdles were almost getting in my way. I just couldn’t get it right and it was just becoming too frustrating. I wanted to win a medal and run 54. I felt I didn’t do myself justice.”

Her Commonwealth experience then lurched from bad to worse when she had a gold medal snatched from her grasp in the women’s 4x400m. The England team crossed the line first but were later disqualified and Sanders left the championships empty handed.

On her return medical staff warned her she may have to manage injury problems for the rest of her career competing in the hurdles and it proved the final straw. The young Brit quit the hurdles to concentrate on the 400m flat.

From the middle-class town of Amersham in Buckinghamshire west of London it was not a total surprise Sanders turned to athletics. Her mother, Amanda, was a county standard 800m athlete and she followed in her mother’s footsteps by joining her local club - Chilton Harriers.

Sanders fondly recalls one of her first races came at an open meeting aged 12 when running in trainers she defeated her spike-wearing rivals – sparking a belief in her undoubted ability.

A keen heptathlete and a 200m and 300m sprinter it was only after taking up the 400m Hurdles when she really started to shine.
 
In only her third race at the distance she became an English Schools champion and by the end of her first season she finished fourth in the 1999 IAAF World Youth Championships in Bydgoszcz - behind 2003 World champion Jana Pittman - and won a bronze medal at the European Junior Championships in Riga.

But although success came quickly she laughs at the memory of her tactical approach to races.

“I had no stride pattern I just went and ran,” said Sanders. “I used to jog off so slowly for the first 200m and I used to sprint the last 200m.  It came easy, so when I won it didn’t feel anything special.”

By the autumn of 2000 she had started studying at Loughborough University and after years of relentless competing she took a one-year from competition to enjoy the student life.

Sanders is quick to dismiss any notion she threatened to quit the sport and after quickly returning to the competitive scene she achieved some respectable results, finishing second in the 400m Hurdles at her national championships in 2004. But it was only after moving back home and linking up with Tony Lester, the man who coached Roger Black to Olympic 400m silver and Mark Richardson to European 400m bronze, did she start to make real headway.

Sanders thrived on the extra workload and at last started to fulfil her potential.

“It was pretty tough,” Sanders admitted of Lester’s training. “But if you are in a new situation it pushes you more. I just got stuck in and probably did more training than I thought I was capable of. At Loughborough, with hindsight, I perhaps didn’t push myself as much as I thought I could.”

After her first winter’s training with Lester the results were startling. In 2005 she improved her 400m Hurdles best by more than two and a half seconds from 58.28 to 55.61 and made her Great Britain senior debut at the World Championships in Helsinki. The experience in Finland was bitter-sweet for Sanders. She was disqualified in the semi-finals of the 400m Hurdles but made up for the disappointment by winning a bronze medal for Great Britain in the 4x400m.

Lester, who also coaches Olympic 4x100m champions Marlon Devonish and Mark Lewis-Francis, was clearly bringing out the best in Sanders and she believes it is the speed-based element to training which is bearing fruit.

“His (Lester’s) sessions suit my style of racing,” said Sanders. “At Loughborough the training was more endurance-based. It helps that I am from a real sprint-based group and doing that has helped propel me forward. We’ve got an honest relationship, we can talk about things and he knows I am not going to wimp out of a session.”

Since quitting the hurdles Sanders enjoyed a solid summer last year finishing sixth in the 400m final at the European Championships. But this winter she has made a giant leap forward into world class.

She made her seasonal bow by running 50.60 to win the UK Indoor Championships before matching the time to win at the Norwich Union Grand Prix. Sanders then proved she could withstand the huge weight of expectation at the European Indoor Championships in Birmingham. Facing enormous pressure as overwhelming favourite the Windsor, Slough, Eton and Hounslow sprinted to an emphatic victory in front of a feverish home crowd to land the 400m title in a scintillating 50.02 – becoming the fifth quickest woman in history for the distance indoors.

Many have been staggered by her improvement but she believes she is reaping the benefit of more specialised sprint work.

“Last winter I was still training for the hurdles, so once or twice a week I was doing a hurdles session when the rest of the group were doing speed work,” she explained.

“I’m now improving because I’m doing a lot more flat running sessions. I did a lot of re-hab sessions at the end of last year and I think that has enabled me to run a lot more fast sessions.”

The performance has overnight pushed her to the forefront of not only athletics in her homeland but caused a ripple of excitement across the globe. But despite her delight at winning in Birmingham she is slightly uncomfortable to be burdened by too much expectation and is keen to keep her feet on the ground. She admits the 2006 World Athlete of the Year Sanya Richards is ‘at another level’ and is realistic about what she can achieve this summer culminating in the IAAF World Championships in Osaka.  

“People can get a little bit silly and carried away,” said the down-to-earth Sanders. “The European indoors is probably the lowest level competition for a senior athlete at a major championship. It’s a big jump from that to the world outdoors where there is a hell of a lot of Americans, Jamaicans and Russians running. It’s a bit crazy for anyone to start hanging a medal around my neck.”

“Before the Europeans (Indoors) the aim was to make the final at the worlds and run a 49-second race and nothing has really changed,” she said. “After my performance at the Europeans I can’t say that is unrealistic as I’m only three hundredths of a second away. The aim is to run a good 49 second clocking and then hopefully make the final.”

Looming in the distance beyond Osaka is the Beijing Olympics but like any British athlete the long-term goal is success on home soil at the London 2012 Olympics and Sanders is no different.

“It is way in the distance but in the same breath and I’m still looking forward to it,” she admitted. “I’m going to be 30 at the time of the London Olympics. Birmingham was a tiny taste of what it is going to be like and I think we’ll put on a real good show. I think it will be amazing.”

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 1 - 2007

 

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