Long Jump world season leader Watt: ‘This year I want the gold’

Two years ago at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin rookie Mitchell Watt surprised many pundits by claiming an unexpected Long Jump bronze medal on his first year on the international circuit.

Yet such has been his meteoric rise that on the eve of the next edition of the championships which begin in Daegu, Korea (Aug 27-Sept 4) anything less than gold would be viewed as a failure for a man who this season owns the four longest jumps in the world this season.

“I’d be disappointed with another bronze medal,” said the laidback Aussie without a trace of arrogance. “I think that is the difference between then and now. Then (at the 2009 World Championships) I was happy to just make the final, but this year I want the gold.”

The fact that he is thinking in such positive terms is a fair reflection of the season he was enjoyed. He has won ten of his 12 Long Jump competitions this year. He twice achieved leaps of 8.44m in Melbourne and Shanghai. Leapt 8.45m to win in London but it was his magnificent world leading effort of 8.54m in Stockholm which offered the clearest evidence yet of his gold medal-winning credentials for Daegu.

Still very much a beginner

Yet the stats tell only half the story for a man who has only been training seriously in the sport for three-and-a-half years.

A talented athlete as a youngster competing in Little Athletics when he used to “win pretty much everything apart from the distance races” he quit the sport aged 14 to pursue other sporting interests.

He played a bit of Aussie Rules Football but thrived in rugby union where he played alongside current Australian international Will Genia at Brisbane Boys College and also made the Queensland State team as an outside centre and full back.

Yet his reconnection with athletics came by total chance in late 2007 when he bumped into two old friends the long jumper Chris Noffke (who jumped 8.33m last season) and the triple jumper Kane Brigg. Watt said they spoke of “competing on the European circuit in front of tens of thousands of people and earning some pretty good money” and he was tempted to give the sport another try.

Noffke introduced Watt to the fabled Australian long jump coach Gary Bourne and within months he had leapt 7.97m – just missing out on the Olympic qualification mark. Even then Watt was not convinced his future lie with the Long Jump. He took a two-month break from the sport and started a full-time job as a law clerk with a leading law firm and recalls having little interest in the Beijing Olympics.

“When Beijing was on I was doing no long jumping and I barely watched any of the programme.  I think I only watched the 100m final,” he surprisingly admitted.