Athletics: Welsh track star Watkins plans rugby switch “like Chambers”

Apr 12 2008 South Wales Echo

WELSH athlete Jimmy Watkins plans to “do a Dwain Chambers” by quitting the track and becoming a rugby player.

Watkins is one of Wales’ top middle distance runners, having finished sixth in the world indoor championship finals in Moscow two years ago.

He became the first Great Britain 800m runner to make a world final for 25 years, but even then he admits that he considered quitting the sport.

Now he looks set to take that step by holding talks with Cardiff Blues about attending pre-season training this summer.

The 25-year-old represented Wales in rugby as a schoolboy, so perhaps his switch of sporting career at this stage represents a better chance of success than Chambers, the drug-shamed sprint star who recently joined rugby league outfit Castleford Tigers.

“I wasn’t getting the same sort of buzz from athletics as I used to get,” said Watkins.

“It had become a science and the fun had gone out of it. I used to listen to a song by The Vines which lasted exactly one minute 41 seconds and that was how I knew if I was running to schedule.

“I was fed up with all the science of running – all I ever really wanted to do was run and run fast.

“I can do 100 metres in 10.7 seconds, so maybe I could be of use to a rugby team – on the wing, maybe.

“I went on a training trip to Holland last year and was living with some Kenyan athletes and saw at first hand the sort of lifestyle they had. And I realised it just isn’t for me.”

Watkins, who still holds the Welsh indoor 800m record, has put his experiences as a top international runner to good use – by writing a novel.

And he has shown the sort of audacity which pushed him into the top flight by contacting the agent for JK Rowling – author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter books.

“I wrote the novel for my dissertation at the end of a creative writing course at the University of Glamorgan,” explained Watkins.

“I found the e-mail address of her agent and sent it off to him, on spec.

“I didn’t really expect a reply – he must get thousands of manuscripts – but he wrote back and encouraged me to keep going with it, although he didn’t offer me a contract.”

The novel tells the story of an international runner who reaches a world final and then quits the sport and travels the globe in a sort of lengthy road movie, before returning to running.

“I don’t think it’ll be life imitating art in my case,” said Watkins, who lives with his girlfriend, fellow athlete Jo Safe, in Cardiff.

Now, Watkins, who warmed up for his races by listening to his hero Jimi Hendrix playing Purple Haze, has turned his attention to music. He has a solo gig lined-up in a Canton pub later this month and has joined a band.

“I’m making no predictions on how far we can take it, but it is fun and that’s the main thing,” he said.

“I am enjoying life. I work for an estate agent and don’t miss athletics.

“I haven’t told too many people I’ve packed up, but I don’t think I’ve been missed much.

“No-one’s contacted me asking me how training is going – apart from the Echo, that is!”

echo.sport@mediawales.co.uk