I was struggling... I spent hours in the bath praying

Elim member Joel Fearon is running the race set before him – but it certainly has its ups and downs, he tells Direction

A month before Joel Fearon became Britain’s third fastest 100m sprinter, he was ready to give up.

The Olympic runner and bobsledder was injured and struggling with the weeks of separation from his young family.

“I didn’t think I could do it anymore and spent hours in the bath praying,” he tells Direction.

“But the thing that came to me more than once was, ‘If you start something, finish it. Don’t stop halfway through.’ Just weeks later, I was in the newspapers as the third fastest 100m sprinter behind Linford Christie and James Dasaolu.

“It was as wild as it gets and I didn’t see it coming,” he says after achieving his personal best time of 9.96 seconds in 2016.

His whole career has been like this, he says – a story of sporting highs, emotional lows and provision from God beyond his wildest dreams.

It started in 2011 when 20-year-old Joel and his wife Gemima moved to Loughborough. “I used to be in finance, but I got quite good at athletics on the side and Jemima encouraged me to pursue it.