The Brit retires from athletics after securing a myriad of medals at both junior and senior level
Jodie Williams, who competed for Great Britain at three Olympics and was part of the 4x400m squad that claimed bronze at Paris 2024, has retired.
Jodie Williams Announces Retirement: “An Incredible Ride”
The 31-year-old announced she would hang up her spikes in an Instagram message that stated “you [track and field] allowed me to achieve my childhood dreams and have taken me from an awkward little girl with no confidence to a just as awkward but much more confident woman”.
She added: “Our story has been one of overcoming, accepting and redefining. Although we didn’t reach every milestone we set out to achieve, we made some crazy plays and it’s been the most incredible ride.
“You have humbled and exposed me more times than I can count. Through this, I found a strength I did not know I had. I now know I can tackle anything life throws at me.
“Through you, I have met some of my greatest mentors and friends, people I will stay connected to for life. I’ve learned moments are fleeting and that you should make frequent stops to take it all in. Due to this, I can now move deliberately and confidently in my next direction and I’m so excited to see what will unfold.”
Jodie Williams (Mark Shearman)
Jodie Williams specialized in both the 200m and 400m during her senior career and boasted respective personal bests of 22.46 and 49.97.
The Brit claimed a stunning 200m silver at the 2014 European Championships, finishing behind Dafne Schippers in Zurich.
Jodie Williams’ Impressive Medal Haul: European and Commonwealth Success
Jodie Williams also claimed an individual European indoor bronze medal over 400m in 2021, with just Femke Bol and Justyna Święty-Ersetic in front of her in Torun.
Individual medal success wasn’t limited to European levels, with Jodie Williams securing a 200m silver and 400m bronze at the Glasgow and Birmingham Commonwealth Games, respectively.
Jodie Williams won a myriad of major relay medals. Outside of the Olympic 4x400m bronze in Paris, one of her greatest other successes was being part of the victorious British 4x100m team at Zurich 2014.
A prodigious junior talent, Jodie Williams became world junior and youth champion over 100m, claimed European junior titles in the 100m and 200m, and struck gold over half a lap at the European U23 Championships.
The quickest young lady on earth is entirely still as she peers down at a photo of herself in tears. Jodie Jodie Williams stops as she concentrates on how her face has been frozen in a preview of doubt and depression. And afterward, unfit to contain herself on a rooftop porch in a humble community in Portugal, the 17-year-old run peculiarity from Hertfordshire blasts out snickering.
“I was so not cheerful,” Jodie Williams says of her response the previous summer to the main loss she had at any point endured. After a phenomenal record, in which she won her initial 151 races, Jodie Williams was at last beaten in the last of the 200m at the World Junior Titles in Canada. Her undefeated run extended across not just five years of authoritatively confirmed junior occasions but incorporated the wide range of various races she had never counted – at sports days or out in the nursery. Jodie Williams had won each and every time she had at any point run.
She lost to an American runner named, Blustery Kendrick, as various as the unadulterated blue sky over her family’s vacation home in Alvor. “I was really crying around 20m from the completion since I realized I wouldn’t get her. I’ve watched the video since and I was coming 6th. I was crushed yet I thought, ‘Hey now, you must get a decoration.'”
Through the cloak of her tears, Jodie Williams ran a rankling finish to win silver. “I was crying before the end since I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to deal with it. That evening I didn’t rest by any means. My family weren’t remaining in a similar inn so I was simply there, weeping for a very long time. I needed to run the hand-off the following day and I thought, ‘Right, let’s get it done.’ Yet that wasn’t exceptionally effective all things considered.”
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