AGED 35, Conrad Williams has been a mainstay of the GB 4x400m team for much of the last decade. As part of the relay squad he has won multiple medals and as an individual 400m runner he competed in the 2012 Olympics in his home city. He is a popular and recognisable figure with fans due to his trademark headband, but 2018 will be his final year.
“It’s time for the headband to come off,” he smiles, as he tells AW that this will be his retirement season.
“I’m going to finish in September this year,” he explains. “I’m injury-free and don’t have any niggles right now, but I probably train four days a week compared to the six that I used to do.
“It’s time to retire. I’ve done a lot and achieved a lot and it’s time to put my energy into other things.”
History shows he is one of Britain’s finest 4x400m runners of all time. Starting with silver at the IAAF World Championships in 2009, he has won two silvers and a bronze at the World Indoors, European silvers in 2010 and 2012, plus Commonwealth and European golds in 2014.
Individually, when it came to speed he won the national indoor 200m title, while his stamina was shown when he ran a British indoor record for 500m of 61.59 in Prague in 2014. That indoor time also, incidentally, places him No.3 on the all-time overall (outdoor/indoor) national rankings at 500m behind David Jenkins and Colin Campbell’s altitude-assisted UK record – and a couple of places ahead of Seb Coe.
Given this, he finds it hard to pick a highlight from his career, although racing at the London Olympics is difficult to beat.
“When London was awarded the Games, I thought ‘whatever happens, I have to be there’. Right from London winning the bid, people were asking me for tickets. So I had about five years of friends and family asking for tickets and if I could get them a pass!
“There was pressure for myself to get there and compete but also the pressure of potentially having to tell everyone that I wasn’t there!
“It’s not easy to make an Olympic Games. There are lots of athletes going for just three places.”
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