THE HARD YARDS MATTER MOST | Jay-Marcus Rhoden-Stevens, 400m
Rising start Jamal-Marcus Rhoden-Stevens is what you may call a late-bloomer. Though he is best known on the athletics circuit as a nippy 400m runner, he actually participated in several sports before taking up sprinting full time. For a while, Rhoden-Stevens played semi-professional football for Welling FC. He suddenly concluded his career in favour of athletics and become a competitive long jumper. However, it was the sprinting practice which he found the most enjoyable, so at the age of 18-going-on-19 he found his calling. Now, Rhoden-Stevens boasts a 46.54s 400m personal best.
More often than not, athletics stars begin their track career early on in their teenage years. Other famed 400m runners such as Martyn Rooney and Christine Ohuruogu competed as juniors, participating in events such as the London Youth Games, the European Junior Championships and the Junior World Championships, however this was not the case for Rhoden-Stevens. This is certainly not to say that he is any less prepared for success. 100m athlete Adam Gemili also began sprinting full-time at the age of 19, and has since gone on to win multiple international medals.
The decision to take a leap of faith into the unknown is an admirable move by Rhoden-Stevens, as there is never a guarantee that the move will pay off. Rhoden-Stevens considers this his mindset though: he is a self-proclaimed go-getter, glass-half-full kind of athlete. The question of how he will achieve greatness comes after his decision to fully pursue it. Currently, Rhoden-Stevens is located at a warm weather training camp in Jamaica in order to gain new perspectives and get outside of the London bubble. His sudden decision to go to Jamaica was another one of Rhoden-Steven’s moves to push himself further: “I don’t think of how, I just think ‘I’m going to do this’. To people it’s a bit like ‘what is this guy talking about?’ But for me, that’s my mindset. That’s how I stay positive. I keep on dreaming because if I stop thinking about possibilities, then I’ll probably just quit.”
Rather than viewing his ability to sprint as a gift, Rhoden-Stevens views his venture into sprinting as a great opportunity. Knowing that time is very rarely on the athlete’s side, he is hyper-aware that he needs to make his time count as an up-and-coming elite athlete. “I always think to myself…you have a small window [for] doing something in your life. After that, you are growing up again, getting older, and you just don’t want to live with any regrets. I always think to myself ‘Okay, I’ve got [an] opportunity to be good at a sport or an opportunity to be good at whatever I’m doing. Make it count.” Knowing that he has explored his options, even if they did not work out Rhoden-Stevens suggests he is content with knowing he gave sprinting his all: “You can be one injury away from never running again. Hopefully that never happens to anyone, but it has happened to people and of course nothing is guaranteed in life…You just have to take the opportunity”.
Rhoden-Stevens partly attributes his positivity to his faith (and is quick to comment that the answer is seen as a bit of a cliché), but also the people who are close to him: “It’s the people that are close [to you] that keep me having possibilities in my head because I’m a dreamer. I’m a person that’s optimistic…I see someone do something and I’m like ‘I can do that!’”. Rhoden-Stevens has even viewed the global pandemic as a window of opportunity. His routine was “switched up” as he couldn’t train on a racetrack for a long time and the racing calendar was uncertain, therefore he began completing weight training at home and running on grass with friends: “Having them with me and doing sessions was really good and really uplifted me”. Rhoden-Stevens even found his lockdown training fun, as he discovered new methods of training which allowed him to “just be able to run…to do something that was good for me”. Learning how to be patient was another new found virtue for the athlete. Although he may choose to practice patience more often now there is no doubt that he is still eager to get racing again with a bid for the 2021 Olympics still on the cards.
