In an exclusive interview with AW, the double Olympic medallist and European 400m record-holder discusses his record-breaking season, the predictive powers of his coach Gary Evans and why the road to success isn’t always smooth
Matthew Hudson-Smith spent a lot of the early part of this year “looking up to the sky” but his arduous winter training proved instrumental in what has been a record-breaking season.
Under the guidance of coach Gary Evans, the 29-year-old dropped his personal 400m best from 44.26 to 43.44 – breaking his own European record on four occasions – and claimed an Olympic silver medal over one lap, plus a bronze in the relay.
In an exclusive interview in the October issue of AW, out now, Hudson-Smith opens up about his record-breaking season, being pipped to Olympic gold by Quincy Hall and why stomaching such hard work in training was ultimately worth it.
For someone who has had well-documented struggles – both mental and physical – to overcome in recent years, he has taken great strides forward and is approaching every area of his life from a position of strength.
When it comes to the day job, Hudson-Smith has never been stronger and all of that late winter pain paved the way to a very impressive series of performances. It was in early summer that he began to see the fruits of his labour emerging.
Matthew Hudson-Smith (Jerry Sun/PUMA)
“We started off nicely,” he says, going back through his season. “I opened up with 45.00 [in mid-April], pretty standard. I had a little bit of hip issue at the time so it gave us something to build on. We did the World Relays to get back into the shape of things, then I ran 44.69 in Jamaica and it was like: ‘Okay, we’re cooking’.
“We went back to training and did a race model session that showed I was in sub-44.10 shape. It was after that that Gary said to me: ‘This is what you can expect. This is what you’re going to run’. It wasn’t until I crossed the line in Oslo and saw 44.07 that I was like: ‘Okay, this guy knows what he’s talking about!’.”
That Diamond League performance at the end of May signalled the removal of a chunk from the European record of 44.26 Hudson-Smith had set in the semi-finals of the World Championships in Budapest last year. It was not the end of Evans’ unerringly accurate predictions, either.
“He has a little book and, in London [ahead of the Diamond League meeting in July], again we did a race model session. In the book it said:…
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