Brianna Williams’ latest coaching change could yet spark a revival in her career

This is another story that was missed in my recent travels. I like this piece on Brianna, as it gives you, the reader, a view into the many challenges of the athlete-coach relationship. This piece is done by Deji Ogeyingbo.

Brianna Williams’ latest coaching change could yet spark a revival in her career. 

At what point does the changing of the guard in sports take place? It’s a natural reoccurrence in life. Sport isn’t different. The old is making way for the new, old players retiring to pave the way for the younger ones or the upcoming stars taking the bull by the horn to challenge their more established counterparts.

The shelf life of an average sportsman is about ten to twelve years at the very top. The number was way higher in the last century, but with the huge amount of money being pumped into events and competitions has mitigated a large inflow of people participating in sports from a very young age. 

Athletics is one of those few sports in which you rarely find top stars continue performing at the top level going into their mid-thirties and late thirties. There are a few exceptions, though. Distance runners who transition into road running can carry on into their forties for the most part, but still, for the most part, very few can still remain at the top.

All these components constitute why precocious youngsters are so much under pressure to live up to the hype and why they pop onto the scene at a very young age. The fans crave it. The next Eliud Kipchoge, Tirunesh Dibaba, Veronica Campbell Brown, or Usain Bolt is well sort after. 

So, it wasn’t surprising when a sprinting nation like Jamaica slobbered over the emergence of Brianna Williams when she popped into the scene at the World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, in 2018. She was a beauty to behold. Poetry in motion if you like. At 16, she was miles ahead of her peers as she took down records of sprinters much older than she would have struggled.

In the Nordic country, Williams completed the sprint double in 22.50s as she became only the fourth woman to accomplish the feat and joined Campbell Brown of Jamaica, the first woman to win a double in 2000 in Santiago de Chile; Tezdzhan Naimova of Bulgaria in China in 2006, and Anthonique Strachan of the Bahamas in Barcelona, Spain in 2012. 

The Island nation was in elation. They had found their next Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce. However, the following years under her coach Ato Boldon was one of stagnation and…