by Stuart Weir
GB athletes leaving Italy
A number of British athletes have left the Padova-based sprint training group led by coach Marco Airale. Adam Gemili is said to be is moving into coaching and has recently launched an online fitness training business. Whether he has actually retired is a different question. Jeremiah Azu, a sprint relay medalist in Paris as well as having previously taken bronze in the 2022 European Championships, has returned Cardiff in Wales to team up with his old coach Helen James. We understand that Reece Prescod, and Ama Pipi have also left Italy, but Amy Hunt appears to have remained.
The most interesting departure is Daryll Neita, who is understood to have moved to join the Pure Athletics group in Clermont, Florida, which includes Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles, to work with Lance Brauman. Neita, who finished fourth and fifth in the Olympic 100m and 200m last summer, has not commented publicly on the reasons for the move.
It is not Neita’s first trip to America as she worked with Rana Reider, 2019-2021, until allegations made against Reider, made UK Athletics instruct it’s funded athletes to leave him.
Going to America is not easy for British athletes. Daryll told me a couple of years ago of her relocation to Reider’s group. “It was a big decision because I’d been training in the UK my whole life but I felt that I needed to get to the next level. Going to America is not easy. You don’t pick up your stuff and just go. You’re changing your environment. You’re changing your surroundings. There are cultural differences. But I just knew that I needed the next stage so I packed up and went to America. And it was great, the next stage was amazing. It taught me a lot and shaped me into the athlete I am today”.
Jazmin Sawyers worked with Lance 2017-21. She explained to me: “I always thought that my take-off was good and my jumping was good but my weakness was my speed. Several people said to me ‘if you want someone with a jumps background who will make you faster, Lance is the man’. I wanted to do whatever would make me jump better. So I approached him at a Diamond League and he agreed to coach me”. She also talked about the challenge of relocating to US: “It may not seem that much but it was enough to be a big adjustment for me. I expected America to be like Britain but with sun! It is nothing like home. You can’t walk anywhere. You need a car and in my first year I could not afford a car. So it was very much get a lift to and from training and then sit in the flat until training next day. I am very sociable but in America I found it hard to make friends. People generally wanted to do their own thing after training.. I am not in America long enough to be worth buying a car so I rent but before I was 25 I had to pay an excess young driver fee. I don’t think of it as living in America. I go there for 3-4 months a year. I would typically go to America November to Christmas and then be back in Europe for indoors. Then I would go back to American for the first two months of the outdoor season but then again most of the outdoor events are in Europe”.
It will be interesting to hear from Daryll her reasons for the move. She told me last year: “After 3 years in Italy, it feels like home really. I’ve got my own place and my dog Melon out with me and he keeps things pretty normal. We are able to go for walks. We can grab an ice cream or just enjoy Italy. There’s also so many places to go and explore. It’s just a great place. The food’s good. I’m able to enjoy some really good food. I love Italy because I’ve got, access to fashion and I’ve made some friends out there as well”.
She was also always very positive about Marco as a coach: “I think Marco is an absolute genius. He ticks every single box, he covers everything. No corners are cut. We train very hard. He’s just dedicated focused and passionate about what he does. He wants to get the best out of us. It’s great. He’s a good coach! Marco is just so refreshing. It is just so nice to work with somebody who is so hungry and so dedicated to what he does. He loves track and field. It is literally his passion. And I love track and field as well so it’s nice to be around someone who is just focused on wanting to be better, to be around someone who brings out the best in you. He creates a light hearted environment for you to focus on the training in hand and also having a bit of fun as well. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just feel happy that I have found a coach that I can be with for the rest of my career. It’s a really nice environment”.
Going back to Darryl’s previous stay in USA, she once told me about the “privilege to have trained alongside some of the greatest athletes of all time. Just watching their drive and the way they train, the mental aspect that goes into it – just the whole package is so inspiring. It is just great to be around Olympic champions, world champions, medalists and to see how they approach things and how they train and the mindset they have going into competition. Overall it was really inspiring and I believe that it played a massive part in the growth that I have had as an athlete. I learned so much from my teammates”. Finding world-class sprinters to train alongside won’t be difficult in Clermont.
