Newly crowned European indoor men’s 60m champion Jeremiah Azu heads into this week’s World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China (21-23 March) with renewed confidence after his gold medal success at Apeldoorn 2025 delivered immediate dividends from a winter training switch.
The British runner went back to his Cardiff roots, rejoining original coach Helen James in Cardiff, after training in Padova, Italy since 2022.
And the benefits of home comforts extended to the European Indoor Championships (6-9 March) in the Netherlands, the country of Azu’s birth and where many of his family still reside. He cut a relaxed and contented figure all week, culminating in an impressive victory in the men’s 60m in 6.49.
The winning habit
“I am going to try and start making this a bit of a habit,” he said in the aftermath of his victory. “I have been saying that this is the first of many.
“This has confirmed to me that I made the right decisions in the lead up to this. My team around me have helped me make the right decisions. Of course I am on the start line doing it, but there is a bunch of people behind me allowing me to stand on that start line with confidence.
“I decided to move home, back to Cardiff. I spoke to my former coach Helen James, and she got a bunch of people together. Welsh Athletics have been a massive help. They’ve pulled things together to make a world class environment for me with very short notice.”
A former footballer for Risca United in the Welsh Premier League, Azu was late to discover his talent for sprinting. “In 2016 I was doing the school competitions, just putting on the spikes for the summer,” he recalls. “I just got chucked into the sprints and I think I broke the schools record, and I had never done a day’s training in my life.
“From there, Helen found my number somehow, gave me a call at 10-11pm and said: ‘you need to start taking this sport seriously.’ I still didn’t even take her phone call seriously, but within the first year together we won the British U17 title. We’ve done the junior stage, done the British stage and now we are on the international stage.”
Paris heartbreak
His career had been on an inexorable rise, winning successive European U23 100m titles (Tallinn 2021 and Espoo 2023) bookending 100m bronze at the Munich 2022 European Athletics Championships. But it came to a shuddering halt when he false started in the 100m heats in his first Olympics in Paris last summer.
It was a devastating experience for Azu, but he has since found perspective. “It’s unfortunate,” he says. “It’s athletics. Regardless of what I heard, I got disqualified. It’s the rules, one false start and you are out. It doesn’t define me. It’s a moment in my career that people are going to talk about. It’s a negative. But I can only look forward. The past is the past.
“I’ve always said I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened in my career and that’s part of it. It’s part of my story.
“In four years’ time when we are in LA (2028 Olympic Games) and the outcome is completely different, it will be part of the story where people say ‘you should never give up, because this is what happens, he’s come back and four years later, look at what’s happened. He has done x.’ We can only look forward now and use what we have learned from it.”
Azu at least had the significant consolation of 4x100m bronze with his British team mates in Paris. Nanjing will be his first global championships since Paris.
Ranked second in men’s 60m going into the event behind only Australian Lachlan Kennedy (6.43), Azu has the feelgood factor back and another visit to the championship podium looks well within reach.
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics