I was hesitant to go back into sport

We talk to former sprinter and now coach Dwain Chambers, who openly shares his experiences and tells us about appearing on Celebrity SAS.

Track sprinter Dwain Chambers, originally from London, is one of the fastest 100 metre sprinters in athletics history and has won over 30 medals. He is the European record holder for the 60 metres and 4×100 metres relay events.

Chambers received a two-year athletics ban in 2003 after testing positive for a banned performanceenhancing drug.

Having learned from his experience, he now is now coaching children to nurture a new generation of young athletes. He previously appeared on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, in which he sustained a chest injury and passed a gruelling tightrope walking challenge above a ravine.

He talks about what motivates him these days and why it’s good to push out of your comfort zone…

DH: We’ve known about you for many years. What’s really exciting is what you’re doing now – using all your experience and skills to bring through the next generation of talent.

DC: It’s funny because I did try other things. But it wasn’t natural. Anytime you come up with an environment where you have been established in for a fair amount of time, and then you’ve got something new is foreign. There was some form of resistance from my part.

Obviously, I’m a sportsman trying to get job. It just didn’t sit well with me. But what was natural to me was sport. And as much as I rejected it because of what I’d gone through based on my own actions, I was hesitant to go back into sport, thinking that okay, the sport’s done this to me, but equally it was what I’ve done to the sport.

Once I got my head around the fact that what happened were my actions and nobody else’s I had to turn it on its head and think, ‘How can I put back? Do I want to put back? What am I going to put back?’ This was a conversation I had to have with my wife, she’s like, ‘It’s what you do – it’s what you know. Because, like it or not, you’ve lived life on both sides of the coin. There’s nobody else out there that has. And if parents are going to trust somebody who has been there, done it, and can guide them in a positive direction, this is you’. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll give it a try’. And here I am today talking to you about it.

DH: What has been the biggest challenge and what has changed since you were a teenager?

DC: I think there’s a lot more science involved. Science for good and bad, because sometimes it can be paralysis by analysis. Sometimes, I think there are a lot of the old school coaches who have dealt with athletes that successful and run really well with no science. And then we have some coaches who are new school who haven’t come from the old school graph, who rely heavily on science. I’m a mixture of both. Science plays a great deal in how we can monitor athletes’ recovery, because I think our generation overtrained, but we were different beasts.

I also notice young athletes in my era, who played out a lot more in the summer. We were more robust. We were climbing trees; we were outside all summer for hours on end. So, our durability or sustainability was far superior. Youngsters in this generation, they don’t play a lot. They bail out (from challenges). I think it’s important that you push yourself to know your limitation.

I’m a little bit on the fence. I tried to push my kids but equally I try not to push my kids too far down one way or the other way, because then they won’t ever do it again. I’ve seen kids fall victim of that.

DH: Do you think there’s a fine line between somebody’s ability and then actually fulfilling their potential?

DC: Good question. Athletics is a hard one because we have a lot of kids who have great ability and not to disrespect them, but we have a lot of coaches who get blessed with kids with ability that don’t know how to manage them. Equally we have a lot of coaches who have great skills. You got to train a hell of a long time.

DH: Do you find that the kids are very self-motivated? Or is it the parents pushing them?

DC: I think it’s combination of both. Some kids are really motivated. And they don’t have the parents to support them because they’re busy working, because it’s that’s the way life is right now. But equally, a lot of parents are pushing their kids because they want to give them a chance to be better than they were. Some parents are living their life with their children. I do it because I want my kids to be able to fly and see the world. I was pretty fortunate. chambersforsport.com

DH: What does the future hold for you and British athletics? Do you think we’ve got a lot of talent coming through?

DC: I think in order for athletics to push and be as dominant as it once was and why it was dominant was because we had a lot of rivalries. We had the rivalry between Linford Christie and Carl Lewis.

I think we can get some good marketing surrounding athletes would be useful. So that’s a slight reach out to somebody in marketing who can get in touch. I would really like to know how we can make athletics more entertaining. Add some excitement to it. If we can make it something that’s more frequent on a Saturday, just as frequent as football, and it becomes more interesting, then we can build up personalities. It would be good to sit around a table. Just get some ideas from people who are established in marketing. Yeah, just offer some ideas.

DH: What plans have you got for 2023?

DC: I’ll go for the Masters world record in 100 metres.

@dwainchambers