Episode 9 Inspire: The Olympic Journey

Being a great athlete is not only about the body, it's about the mind.

Learning how to win, how to lose, how to overcome adversity.

It's gaining all of the knowledge possible about your body's

capabilities, and then pushing it further still.

This month, we meet three people leaving nothing to chance

as they strive for excellence on their sporting journeys.

I've come to the University of East London to meet a sprinter

who's earning praise from the very best.

A world junior and European Under-23 100m champion,

just how does Adam Gemili combine life

as an ordinary 20-year-old student

and an international track star in waiting?

Also in today's show, Lee McKenzie heads to Scotland to see how

judo player Euan Burton is combining coaching with competing.

The way I balance it is I do everything

I can to be the best coach I can and I squeeze the training in around it.

We spend a day with squash world champion Nick Matthew,

whose sights are firmly set on this summer's Commonwealth Games.

Having two gold medals in Delhi was an amazing feeling,

and I'm desperate to add to my tally in Glasgow.

And we want to inspire YOU to get active.

Find out more about getting involved in a sport near you

by visiting our website.

And you can also get in touch with us via Twitter.

-Hey, Adam.

-Hiya.

-How are you?

-Yeah, I'm good thank you. How are you?

-Thank you very much for meeting us here today.

-It's cool.

So this is where it all happens for you in the cerebral

-part of your life, the thinking part.

-Yeah, this is the university.

How long have you been here now, two years?

This is my second year. One more year after this...

-You can graduate.

-Then I'm graduated.

-And you've got a lecture today.

-Yes, a couple of lectures today.

-And training.

-And training.

-And us.

-And you guys, so...

-You've got a lot to squeeze in.

-Yeah, we've got a busy day today.

We'd better get started. Let's have a little look around.

Adam, tell us exactly what your degree is called and all about then.

So, I'm studying Sports and Exercise Science here

at the University of East London.

It involves a lot of different modules related to sports,

whether it be anatomy, psychology, biomechanics

and things like that and it's something that I really enjoy doing.

So are you doing it to learn even more about your body

so you can be an even faster sprinter,

or are you doing it because

you want to get a degree whatever, whether you were doing sport at all?

I've always wanted to have a degree, even when I was playing football.

I've been very encouraged by my mum, my dad and my grandma and stuff like that.

They've always encouraged me to get some sort of educational backing behind me

and obviously it does help a lot with sprinting,

especially the biomechanics side of things

and if you're using psychology, you can learn a bit about your mind.

So, yeah, it does help me in both,

but I've always wanted to get some sort of a degree.

But then you've got to balance being an international superstar

in the making with getting a degree.

You're in the second year now, so it's a lot of work.

Any student watching this will know the kind of workload you've got,

and a lot of people you're on the line with at the beginning

of a race are only focusing on athletics, aren't they?

Yeah, it can be tough.

It can be extremely tough to juggle doing coursework and exams

and things like that around training, but along with my uni

and my coach and stuff, we're very flexible and we move

things around and we make things work and we get it done.

When I went to Florida last year to train

and a lot of those guys are just there focusing on

track and field, track and field, track and field...

When I'm there, doing coursework after training

and they're all chilling by the pool,

it can be a bit frustrating, but it's something I've got to do.

But do people look at you in a different way here?

-Are you seen as a bit of a superstar round campus?

-I don't think so.

I think people around campus are familiar with me and when people get to know me,

they know that I'm just a normal guy

and I can be a bit of a loser at times or whatever like that.

-Surely not. Forgetting your books, getting up late...

-Yeah.

Staying out until three in the morning? Surely not.

Not quite, not quite that, but apart from the party side

and the going out side, I'm just like a lot of young students.

PRESENTER: Well, it wasn't that long ago that on a Saturday morning,

Adam Gemili would have been pulling on his football boots

and thinking about starting the football season.

A Dagenham and Redbridge player, now a British Olympian sprinter.

-Let's go back, at the end of 2011, you were still at Dagenham and Redbridge.

-Yeah.

So at that point, you're thinking that you're still going to

be a professional footballer.

At football, they said, "We'd like to offer you a professional contract.

"However, you can't do running any more

"and you can't go to university, and you can't do things like that."

And these things were quite important to me.

So it was a big decision with my mum and my dad and the rest of my family

and friends to sit down and think, "OK, let's stop football, you can

"always come back to football if athletics doesn't work out."

That's interesting.

So as well as obviously the attraction of being able to

do more, being able to study,

you thought perhaps football might be an option further down the line?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

After 2012, I was completely planning on going back to football.

It was only because of the World Juniors and making the Olympic team and doing so well, that I thought,

"OK, maybe I can't just walk away from this."

I'm a world champion. I need to have a look at this!

Maybe I've got a bit of potential to do better.

And the talent that you have physically is one thing.

That can be honed, that can be trained.

The mental side,

to not be a competitor in athletics for all those years and then

turn up at World Championships, that must be an innate thing.

I think, if anything, it might have been a bit of naivety,

not actually knowing the scale of things.

I don't think I realised the scale of the Olympics until after.

At the British trials in 2012

when I made the team,

I was really happy

and I went home and I was happy and then

I just went to bed and woke up the next day

and that was it for me.

It wasn't a big deal

because I didn't realise the scale of it

and how hard people have trained to make that sort of team, so, yeah...

Feel a bit guilty now?

A little bit.

But like you said, when I am on the start line,

and you see me smiling, especially in 2012,

it was literally just because I was just enjoying myself.

I had no pressures to be there, I had no stress, I had no expectations.

That's interesting, yeah.

I was just there to have fun, so I try and do that now,

cos I think I'm not really the type of person to be angry

and aggressive and stick my chest out.

I'm not that type of person, so I just try and enjoy myself.

Usain Bolt doesn't do it either.

Yeah, he has fun, and I think the more relaxed you are,

the better it is.

How much has it kept you grounded,

coming into the student union on a weekly basis?

Yeah, extremely grounded.

I think, like I said to my friends after the World Championships,

they were all like, "Oh, yeah, good job, but you finished fifth,

"and you got disqualified from the relay".

Get yourself off. I know you've got a lecture to go to now.

-Thank you very much.

-So what are we going to now?

-We're going to Research Methods.

-I'll let you do that.

-OK.

..You're going to go to Brazil for...

an event, yeah...

Studying is helping to keep Adam's mind focused and sharp,

but being at university is also helping to keep him grounded

as he works towards achieving his goals on the world stage.

Euan Burton might be slightly older at 35,

but he's asking new questions of himself as he combines

competing with a job coaching the Scottish judo team.

And as Lee McKenzie found out, it's a role he's revelling in.

You've come in, you've done your admin, you've been a coach, now you're back to being a player,

you're sweating.

I mean, it's a strange balance that you've

got to get right in your day-to-day life now.

I've had 20 years of being pretty selfish about my training

and now I'm having to make sure

I'm as selfish as I can be for the guys in my team, and that's...

The way I balance it is, I do everything I can to be

the best coach I can and I'll squeeze the training in around it.

That's probably why I'm a bit sweatier than everyone else.

The truth is, I probably don't work any harder,

I'm probably slightly less fit than some of these guys at the moment,

but hopefully by Commonwealth Games time, that'll have rectified itself.

'Really, for me, the end of my career as an athlete came after London.

'I knew after London I was going to take a job coaching

'and I knew with that was going to come more responsibility

'and responsibility for a lot of other people,

'so although I am going to compete in Glasgow

'and although I obviously want to end up on the top of the podium

'in Glasgow, it's kind of like a second end to my career.

'It's like I've been given a last reprieve of this last two years,

'which is quite nice.'

London was Euan's second Olympics,

and they ended when he lost his first fight of the Games.

London was kind of a completely mad experience for me

because it was the lowest of lows for me on tournament day.

PRESENTER: All the hard work, the four years of waiting,

and he's been dumped out in less than a couple of minutes.

Have you watched that back? Have you watched the moment back? Have you watched the interview back?

I've watched the fight that I had once since the Games.

I think if it had been any other point in my career,

I'd have probably watched it a few times

and tried to analyse what went wrong

and how I could stop that the next time, but I knew London was almost

the finish of my career from a GB

point of view, I knew I was never going to go to another

Olympic Games, so because of that, and because it was so devastating,

I kind of just put it to the side and tried to say "OK, that's done,

"I can't do anything about it now but I'm not going to dwell over it".

Unfortunately, I've seen the interview or parts of the interview once or twice.

I've let myself down a bit, I feel like I've let my coaches down,

I've let everybody I've ever trained with down.

I've let my mum and my dad and my brother down.

'It's difficult to watch.

'Not at least cos it's embarrassing to watch yourself crying on telly,'

but it was a difficult day for me

and those emotions were very raw and very real.

I've not let it hold me back and I won't let it hold me back

in the rest of my life and it won't define me.

But it's always going to be pretty hard to think about that day

or think about what happened there.

Whilst London might not have provided

the positives for Euan as an athlete,

for his now wife Gemma Gibbons, her success helped soften the blow.

The saviour for me was what Gemma did,

because actually, if she'd have gone

and bombed out of the tournament or even won a fight or two,

but not got anywhere near the medals,

I think I'd have had quite a negative view of my London experience

and because of what she did, London sort of took on a whole new

lease of life, and actually, I had an amazing experience.

What was it like coming back from London

when everything had been geared to that, to coming back

to somewhere, which I imagine

-held so much of the training memories.

-Yeah.

It takes on a different life.

'Coming back here initially was quite difficult.'

-Morning, Darren. Morning.

-Morning.

Everybody that was here - training partners and coaching staff

and, you know, members of the Judo Scotland community, were people

who had invested a lot of their time and hopes

and dreams in me and that had come short in London and that was probably

the most difficult thing to deal with coming back initially,

but everybody's got a pretty good nature about them round here

and everyone's got a decent sense of humour.

It's all all right once you've had a laugh at yourself.

Talking about greeting on TV,

just looking for the ratings crying on telly, sort of thing.

People don't let you be down for too long.

The experience, both good and bad,

that Euan can offer Scottish judo players is invaluable.

This, combined with the confidence that he brings to the whole team,

has put Judo Scotland in a great place ahead of the home games.

People's perception of judo training that don't know judo is,

you just get a load of guys in their pyjamas on the mat

and they fight each other for a bit and then they go home,

and there's still a certain truth to that, so that's part of it.

-We do come on the mat and fight each other, but...

-Not in your pyjamas.

No, not in my pyjamas. Not in my Superman pyjamas.

There are also lots of other things around that if you take

care of them well and do them professionally, can help you have

a higher level of career, and a longer time at that high level.

Is there an element that when you're coaching,

you are also, in some ways, reminding yourself of things

that you do know, but you actually forget when you're an athlete.

-Oh, yeah, absolutely.

-And you're almost relearning.

Does that help you, do you think?

Yeah, I think what I've learned about my duelling

and about judo in general

since I've started coaching full-time, is probably as much as I'd

learnt about my judo in the eight or ten years previous to that.

I think I'm still learning. Every day, I'm still learning.

Eventually, I'll get to a point physically

-where I'm not able to do it.

-Yeah.

-But I think I'm still...

I'm a better judo player today than I was yesterday.

As a coach, Euan finds himself in the unusual position

of mentoring one of his rivals, James Austin.

Hopefully he'll be my main competitor, you know,

but I can't think of a better situation

for the Commonwealth Games than the two of us can meet in the final.

But it's an interesting dynamic on trust from both of your parts.

Yeah, I think it's testament to him as a person

and hopefully to me as a person as well, that there is that

element of trust there,

because it gets very easy for people to start feeling, "Oh, someone's

"keeping something back, or not telling something,"

but actually, for James to be the best athlete he can be, I need to

give him everything I can as a coach, but also as an athlete,

the better I am, the better he'll be.

And the better HE is, the harder it pushes me.

What would be a successful Commonwealth Games

from your point of view?

Is it about you? Is it about the team?

For me, it's really about the team.

We've set out our stall that we want to have the most successful

Commonwealth Games that a Scottish judo team has ever had,

and if we do that, then regardless of my own result,

that'll have been a success for me.

We've got a really strong team, we've got a good mix of some youth

and some a bit more experienced like myself,

and I think there's every chance that

if we do the right things like we have been doing in the past

few years, that we can have a very successful Games.

Euan Burton will no doubt try to use the mental toughness he forged after

his disappointment in London 2012 to help motivate his team

and, of course, himself.

And mental strength is something that Adam Gemili is going to need in abundance.

Yes, to compete on the track alongside Yohan Blake

and Usain Bolt, but also to deal with the inevitable attention

that comes with being an international track star.

-So that's the first part of your day over now in the studies.

-Yep.

-How did it go?

-Yeah, good.

-Yeah?

-Quite difficult but it's OK.

It's all good. Not too long left, so...

-And you're just saying you're on for a first?!

-Yeah! Yeah.

So not only are you doing this degree, and combining it

with your athletics, but you're going to get a top degree.

I'm hoping so. If it keeps going well.

-Let's go do some first-class training, shall we?

-Yeah, let's go.

Does it excite you? Does it faze you? Kind of being well-known.

And you must have noticed it more and more that you're getting recognised.

Yeah, I suppose so.

I think, for me, I just think, "Why are people interested in me?"

because at the end of the day, all I really do is run. That's my job.

I'm not a telly presenter, Not someone you see every week on the TV.

I just run for a living and people really enjoy that.

Here's the thing, Adam.

Every single person watching you has tried to run fast.

Not everybody has tried any of those other sports or jobs.

Everybody has, at one point, tried to run fast

-and you can do it better than anybody else.

-Yes, I suppose so.

I just...

When I see guys like, obviously, Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford,

these are the big names in athletics.

These are the people guys recognise and they've got

Olympic gold medals, so I think I'm a little bit off of that status.

But, yeah, I think I more just want to be a role model for young people

rather than in that sort of glamour lifestyle.

I don't want to be going to every event.

Like I said, I don't want my face to be all over billboards

and stuff like that because it's just...

I think I'd find it weird

and plus, my friends would probably ruin me for it

if I was walking and my face was, say, on that billboard there,

I know I'd get so many pictures of them just taking the mick,

standing in front of it, just absolutely rinsing me.

In terms of your goals and dreams and hopes and aspirations, do you

set yourself targets for each season or is it kind of a long-term thing?

For me, yeah, I just want to make the next Olympics,

that's probably the long-term goal.

And short-term, this year, the Commonwealth Games

and the European Championships,

I want to make both of those teams, and you want to go and win.

And as silly as it may sound with some of the sprintage you've got

in the world at the moment,

you want to go there and be challenging for a gold medal.

Any medal's good, but a gold medal is what every sprinter wants.

OK, Adam, enough talk.

You've done the sitting down part of your day and now it's the

really tough physical stuff, so I'm going to let you get on with that.

-Yeah.

-Have a good session.

-Yeah, it'll be good.

It'll be good today, so...

-And I'm going to try and catch up with your coach.

-Yeah, OK.

-Catch you in a bit.

-All right, see you later.

So, today we've seen Adam go to a lecture, spend a bit of time

over there being a student, being an ordinary 20-year-old,

and then drive across here for his session with you.

You've driven from Loughborough.

Is this a typical day in your lives together?

Yeah, this is a typical Tuesday for us anyway.

Adam then takes Wednesday off and travels up to Loughborough

and then we do the rest of the week up in Loughborough.

Unlike a lot of other athletes at his level, you know,

people who are appearing in the finals of World Championships,

not many of them have to kind of deal with that juggling of student lifestyle.

That's quite admirable, isn't it? Having to stick to that plan.

'Yeah, I think education's important to him

'and his family and it's part of what they want to do

'and the person they want him to become,

'and it's just realising that he is only 20,

'and there is an opportunity in time to do this sort of stuff now

'rather than go full-time as an athlete and then maybe sort of lose

'that opportunity, so we're just trying to support him doing that.'

So he's had this very interesting journey into the sport

which was much documented, especially around London

when people said, "Six months ago,

"this guy was playing professional football," and clearly hadn't

had a lot of the build-up to the Games that so many athletes had.

Do you think that, in a way, has kind of aided his mental state

and approach to racing?

Yeah, he's...got no fear.

I think what Adam's got which a lot of other British sprinters

don't have is he's come into the sport very, very raw,

had a lot of success

and hasn't really experienced a period where

he hasn't had success, so he's got no fear,

he doesn't know the sort of bad side to the sport,

which a lot of other sprinters we've had

and a lot of sprinters who have won the World Junior Championships,

British guys, have appeared in their early 20s

where it hasn't really worked out for them.

They've had a lot of negativity around their careers.

It does scar them. It leaves scars and stuff that they have to deal with

further on in their career

and what we're trying to do in British athletics,

not just with Adam,

but with all the sprinters, is make sure that we don't have this

situation where they're extremely talented as juniors and sort of fade

away in their early 20s and come back to sport in their late 20s.

That's the pattern we have in British sprinting, so...

What kind of session have you got for him today?

Today, we're trying to give his body a chance to breathe

and his neural system a chance to recover,

so the session's not going to be quick, it's just about rhythm.

-He thought it was going to be a quick session.

-Yeah.

So he spent all day panicking, thinking it's going to be a really

hard speed session and now you've just blown that out the water.

No, no. It's more about rhythm and finesse today.

And just sort of getting ready for a bigger

session at the end of the week.

It's an easy one, Adam, you're all right. It's an easy session.

Adam is very much at the start of his journey, but with his drive,

determination and enthusiasm, he will only get faster and stronger.

The sky is the limit as to what he can achieve.

Nick Matthew has already achieved in his chosen sport.

Three-time world squash champion and two Commonwealth gold medals,

as well as being ranked number one in the world on many

occasions over the last few years.

Well, at 33 years old, this summer will provide him with yet

another opportunity to showcase his talents on the world stage.

The squash ball's got a quite unique, distinctive sound

when it hits the walls.

As a kid, I was obviously attracted to that. Curious - what was that?

Went and checked it out and the next week,

I was the one who was making that noise.

Probably not as sweet a sound as I hopefully make nowadays.

I just love that one-on-one nature of the sport,

two people in a confined space

trying to beat each other physically,

but without sort of landing actual blows,

so, you know, it's a real challenge.

Squash has been described as chess at a million miles an hour.

The beauty about squash is it challenges everything

and you need to be fast, you need to be aerobically strong,

technically proficient, mentally strong.

When you step on that court, there's no hiding place.

It ultimately comes down to you,

whether you want it more than the other person.

I used to go and watch the British Open,

which is the most famous

squash tournament in the world, and that was at Wembley Arena,

back in the day with the likes of Jahangir Khan, Jansher Khan winning

so many titles and that was the first time it dawned upon me

that I could make a living playing this sport.

ANNOUNCER: Ten years in a row,

Jahangir Khan has been British Open squash champion.

We used to make the homage every Easter to see the

British Open at Wembley and I'm a big Sheffield Wednesday fan as well.

I think my favourite weekend ever was in '91

and Wednesday won the Rumbelows Cup on the Saturday

and I went to watch the squash on the Sunday.

Best weekend ever.

-Welcome back.

-Thank you.

Turning professional at squash is a massive decision.

I had to have a little bit of a wrestle with my parents to

persuade them that it was a good idea.

They wanted me to go to university, continue my education.

I managed to persuade them to have three or four years on the tour.

I didn't shoot up the rankings as quickly as I would have liked.

I was a slow burner, but I learnt so much in those years, you know,

you travel alone, just yourself

in a pretty shocking bed and breakfast somewhere,

trying to fend for yourself, not earning much money.

Playing in tournaments where the prize money is 3,000 total

between 16 or 32 players.

So, I sort of struggled along.

My first big breakthrough was

winning the British Open in 2006.

To become the first English winner of that title of 67 years was an amazing feat.

Real lap of luxury we're living in here.

Oh, yeah.

2010 was an amazing year.

Winning my first world title, two Commonwealth gold medals

and getting to world number one, it was a dream year.

I was the oldest ever first time world number one, which shows

you don't have to achieve everything while you're still a youngster.

There's still plenty of time. You're never too old to get to the top.

They're winners!

Nick Matthew is world champion for the third time in four years.

The third world title in Manchester was definitely the best.

The fact that it was in my home country, all my friends

and family were there watching.

The fact that squash is not yet an Olympic sport makes

the Commonwealths our pinnacle, and I think squash owes a lot to the Commonwealth Games.

We've been a Commonwealth sport

since 1998 and it's seen as the pinnacle of our sport.

It's the biggest multi-game event that squash is part of.

Winning two gold medals in Delhi was an amazing feeling

and I'm desperate to add to my tally in Glasgow, and hopefully

we'll carry on the momentum of sport in this country after London 2012.

ANNOUNCER: His opponent tonight

is a very familiar face here at the Canary Wharf Classic.

He's won this event three times already.

-He is, of course, Nick Matthew.

-Wooh! Go, Nick!

APPLAUSE

The last year in this tournament here in Canary Wharf, I erm...

lost my way a little bit.

It was my eighth tournament in a three month period between January

and March of 2013 and I think I was just squashed out, to be honest.

I'm not going to lie, one of my rackets ended up in the Thames

that year, I was done.

I needed a break and fortunately,

I came back stronger having had that break, so it taught me a lesson

with my scheduling. Hopefully I'll never make the same mistake again.

To be the best in the world at squash, you have to have discipline,

you have to have dedication, you have to have determination.

There's no magic formula.

There's a lot of work over a lot of years, a lot of attention to detail.

11-8! Game to Matthew. Matthew won by three games to love...

Hopefully we can inspire not only the next generation of players,

but also youngsters to take up the sport.

It is an amazingly dynamic and enjoyable sport to play.

You can see whether Nick achieves his dream of a third Commonwealth

gold in Glasgow, with full coverage of the Games right across the BBC.

If Adam Gemili wants to be challenging the very best

this summer, that'll mean more hard work

and more hours spent out on the track.

He looks absolutely shattered and he's got four more of those to go

before he moves onto another group.

There must be some kind of training camp rivalry with James.

-Does that give each of them...

-There honestly isn't.

ANNOUNCER: Look at James Dasaolu go. Magnificent!

Mark Lewis-Francis in second place.

9.91. Wow!

STEVE: They both realise they're at different points of their career.

They're both educating each other in different ways.

James is good at the front end of the race,

so Adam will spend a lot of time observing the way that James

does that, that's sort of picked up a lot.

Adam's very good at dealing with the stresses of training and stuff,

so I think James has learnt a lot from that,

so they're helping each other.

James is a 25-year-old guy, you know, Adam's 20.

James is at a point in his sort of career where, you know,

a lot of stuff's happened in a short space of time.

Adam's the guy we can progressively build into that.

So they're completely different, they really are.

17, good.

Did you deliberately give him

a session where he could still talk at the end of...?

-Very considerate of you.

-Not for today, more thinking about sessions later on in the week.

-How did that feel?

-Better. Easier that way. A lot easier.

-And the whole session?

-Yeah, it's not too bad.

Not too bad.

Had worse sessions, so it was a good session.

-We were talking about the rivalry.

-Yeah.

Steve assures us that you and James, there's no rivalry there.

There's not. We've both sort of got that mentality.

It's like... beating each other is good

and being competitive with each other is good,

but if we make each other better, and with the other guys in the group

as well, then we can go and beat the Americans

and Jamaicans who are like, levels and levels above us, so we just...

It's good to have competitiveness in this country.

The Jamaicans have four guys that go under 10,

same as the Americans.

For us to be up there with them, it's hard but...we'll get it done.

-With that kind of session and a few more of those?

-Oh, man.

I thought I was going to vomit after the first three.

After the first three, running into the wind.

Your mum would have absolutely killed you

if you'd done that in front of our cameras, you know that?

"You're making a fool of yourself."

Striking a balance between striving for success on the track and living

the normal life of a 20-year-old is so important to Adam Gemili.

His outlook is refreshing and as the times fall and his fame rises,

it should keep his feet firmly on the ground.

For Euan Burton,

his competing career could yet end in a glorious Glaswegian summer,

but it's his new challenge, coaching the next generation of

judo players that is really inspiring him now.

Nick Matthew has achieved it all in squash,

but seeing his incredible drive to stay at the top is

so impressive and tells you everything about what's

required to get there in the first place.

Do you want to get involved in sport?

Go to our website to find out more about activities

happening near you. We're back on Sunday, the 8th of June.

In the meantime, here's a reminder of some of the sport coming up

on the BBC between now and then.

We'll see you next time.