Jason Smyth sounds a little torn between the easy and hard choices right now, and only really confident about one. Given the enduring uncertainty around Tokyo, it would be easy to start thinking about retiring, finishing his career still undefeated in Paralympics competition, still the fastest of all time, leaving behind a record that might never be matched.
Only Smyth isn't ready to give up that winning feeling just yet, confident that no matter what shape or form the Paralympics will take next August he can be there winning even more. Which, by my last count, includes 20 gold medals, undefeated on the major championship stage between Paralympics and Para-athletics sprint events, the last coming in the 100 metres T-13 final at 2019 World Para-Athletics Championships in Dubai.
That tally now includes five Paralympics gold medals, another six European gold medals, plus his eight at the World Championships (including one indoors, from 2005). By any standards it is unique record in Irish sport, and although he turns 34 this summer, the Derry athlete and father of two shows no fear or indeed sign of slowing down. Faster, higher, stronger, in other words, for as long as he can.
He greets the question about enduring motivation face on, and if anything the uncertainty around the Paralympics, set for August 24th to September 5th, adds fuel to his still burning desire to be the best he can.
“Throughout that whole period, and 2005 was my first international championships, there’s no doubt the motivation goes up and down,” he says. “I think for me, even though it goes up and down, my level of down has still been quite high, to keep motivated.
“I nearly feel like I’m more motivated now that I’ve ever been, and nearly find with Covid, the more people try to put barriers up, maybe try stop is not the right word, but the more motivated I become to actually prove people wrong.
“So, I think in all honesty, the motivation where I’ve come to where I am now, it’s been an incredible journey, an incredible career, and you know over the next number of years it’s going to be over, so you don’t want to regret any of it, you want to make the most of it, enjoy it, and let’s be honest make it last as long as possible, because you can never replace it. So for me motivation isn’t an issue, the issue eventually for all athletes as they get older is when the body tells you enough is enough. And that you can’t plan for.”
His lifetime best over the 100m, coming in able-bodied competition, was the 10.22 he clocked in 2011, a year after Smyth became the first Paralympics athlete to compete at the 2010 European Athletics Championships in Berlin; that still ranks him the second fastest Irish man in history, after Paul Hession’s national record of 10.18, set in 2007.
He only had two races in the Covid-hit 2020 season, yet still believes he can run faster again. Like all athletes building for Tokyo, he’s training every bit as hard as he normally would be, global pandemic or not, currently based at a warm-weather training camp in the Canaries.
Smyth is also largely self-coached these days too, calling on his experience which over the years saw him train with one of the world’s best sprint groups under US coach Lance Brauman in Florida. Speaking as an ambassador for Toyota, official partner to Paralympics Ireland, he also knows that harder question about when is the time to retire will someday need to be answered, possibly before Paris 2024.
“I know I can run faster, I feel there is room for improvement, and I like to try to achieve things that possibly nobody will ever achieve again. It’s been incredible, 2005, my first major championships, all the way up to now winning gold and being unbeaten, but that’s no guarantee to ever continue.
“I would like to have an incredibly long career, being incredibly successful and to do things that some people will never do, be that success in Paralympics, or crossing into mainstream. And the huge unknown is that you don’t want to get to the point where it is too late, you have to get out of it at a good time, but it is hard to know when that is.
“But the only way to go about them and do them effectively or efficiently is about being positive and I think that’s one of the incredible things I’ve learned through this whole journey in sport, is believing in myself.”
