All Change for Williams As He Goes For Number One

Amid a host of medals won and a small army of British athletics achievers at the European Championships last summer in Barcelona, one athlete stood out because of his reaction to claiming silver.

Rhys Williams, son of the great Welsh rugby winger JJ, had just finished second behind his compatriot and training partner Dai Greene in the 400 metres hurdles final, refused to indulge in any kind of union jack-waving, lap of honour, and made it known to anyone who cared to listen just how gutted he was with the result, even though all the form books pointed to a Greene-Williams one-two. “If you don’t win you lose,” is how he puts it, four months’ later.

When he trailed home in third behind winner Greene again in October at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi Williams’s mind was made up. He had to do something. “I had to change everything.”

The former European Junior and Youth Olympics champion has upped sticks from his beloved home in Wales and his training programme with Malcolm Arnold at the University of Bath and relocated to the Lee Valley Performance Centre in East London, just a couple of miles from the 2012 Olympic Stadium, where he will now be coached by Dan Pfaff.

His new coach is regarded as one of the best in the world, which is why UK Athletics lured the Canadian and former coach to Olympic sprint champions Donovan Bailey and Marion Jones (before Jones became involved in the BALCO scandal) from American track and field to take charge of the Performance Centre.

Williams is of no doubt that his dramatic change of direction will pay dividends. “I’ve got the best coach in the world now so I really have no excuses.”

It is fair to say that the son of a sporting legend found losing, after so many years of winning, hard to take, the more so because his training partner Greene was the man who continually beat him last year.

“I can’t even sit comfortably now and talk about losing in Barcelona and Delhi,” he admits. “It makes me red in the face. Some athletes may be content with mediocrity. Well, I’m not. It may be because I was used to win everything until I got injured and missed the Beijing Olympics. That was so tough I refused to watch a single minute of the Games on TV.

“It’s bad enough when a fellow Brit is beating you, but it’s a hundred times worse when the man you keep coming second to is your Welsh training partner. The Welsh are so inward-looking that everything becomes magnified. Back home people think: “If someone from Wales is beating you, and if you can’t take care of business in your own back yard, then what chance have you got against the world?””

As a result it is evident that Greene is not necessarily top of Williams’s Christmas card list. “How can I be mates with someone I want to kill when I compete against him?” is how the hurdler puts it. “He’s got what I want. It frustrates me how I was beating him easily two years ago. Now I have to say that Dai is a fantastic athlete. He has his race sorted down to the tee. He is doing something right, and I’m doing something wrong.”

According to William’s psychologist it is protecting his own ego. “I think she may be on to something there,” he admits. “My head’s not been right, which is another reason why I’ve left the comfort zone of Wales and changed my life. I beat myself up too much and make life difficult. But the good news is that there is so much more improvement in me, especially when it comes to my slow starts. At the end of the Commonwealth final, for example, I could have run ten laps of honour, I felt that fresh.”

It is not hard to see where the high standards come from. JJ Williams competed for Wales as well in the 1970 Commonwealths as a sprinter before becoming one of the greatest wingers in the history of test rugby. “I’m exactly like my father,” his son explains. "I have the same mentality, the same desire, the same drive. He’s undoubtedly one of the greats of rugby. I want people to say the same of me in athletics.”

Rhys Williams gazes across in the general direction of the Olympic Stadium, now almost complete. “I know I’m not there yet. But with this move I’m confident I will achieve all my goals.”