Greg Rutherford hoping for a safe landing on his D-day

Long jumper must pass fitness test or miss World Championships
24 July 2013

Today held the key to Greg Rutherford’s World Championship ambitions, a first real chance to test the hamstring injury that has ruled him out of the Sainsbury’s Anniversary Games.

Rutherford was carrying out a series of light take-offs into the long-jump pit and how his body held up in the aftermath was the key to whether he would be on the plane with the rest of the ­British squad to Moscow.

UK Athletics made an exemption for Rutherford. When the squad were announced last week, the one vacant spot remained in the long jump, left open for the Olympic champion to prove his fitness for a deadline a week today.

“I’ve got until the end of the month but this is really D-day if you like,” he says.

Rutherford talks matter of factly about the prospect of missing the major championships of his post-Olympic campaign and with good reason — this is the 30th hamstring tear of his season and he has grown accustomed to being forced to sit on the sidelines.

As a result, he will definitely miss London this weekend and a chance to return to the scene of his crowning glory.

“I’m devastated,” he says. “I’ve known for a few days I wouldn’t go back to the Olympic Stadium and being denied the chance to go back to that stadium and have a good performance. That and the worlds are the two best competitions this year. Hopefully, I can at least be at one. Hopefully, by missing London it will work well for the bigger picture and everything heals for the World Championships. That’s the goal.”

Rutherford, 26, admits it is hard to put into percentage terms the likelihood of him being on the Russian long-jump runway but UKA performance director Neil Black is confident enough to have given him a week to prove his fitness.

“My body seems to repair freakishly quickly,” says Rutherford. “It does stuff in a week that most people take a month. This one still might not heal in enough time but, then again, I might be okay.

“I’ll give it a go only if I’m ready. I don’t want to go to the World Championships as Olympic champion and just go out in qualifying just because I’m not fit. There’s also a chance I could get fit and win it, like the Olympics.”

Rutherford estimates he has watched back his Olympic final five or six times since the Games and he talks of the event and the intervening year like it is a blur. “It has just whizzed by,” he says. The aftermath has not quite been the dream scenario. As well as the injury, there has been a gradual parting of the ways with his coach Dan Pfaff and a disappearance of sponsors since his golden summer.

“What has life been like since 2012? That’s an interesting one,” he says. “That was the crowning moment of my career and I thought, ‘this is it’. I remember thinking I’ll get sponsorship, be in magazines and have a big house, stuff like that. It’s just the same things the public would think of an Olympic champion. For some people that has worked out and they’ve done very well for themselves but ultimately that didn’t work out that way for me. For whatever reason, I’m not someone who has been heavily sponsored.

“I’ve got no animosity to others. Athletes like Mo [Farah] and Jess [Ennis-Hill] had done it repeatedly on the world stage so a crescendo had built up to it.

“I’d not performed well at my ­previous two World Championships so I guess there wasn’t that same ­history.”

Rutherford is still hopeful things “could all change suddenly” on the sponsorship front but, in the meantime, he has launched his own clothing line, GRavity, a project aimed at raising the capital to “keep me going”.

As for Pfaff, the relationship has been difficult, the American having relocated to Arizona post-2012.

Initially, Rutherford went with him but the pair then opted for an amicable parting of the ways, although they remain in regular contact. Rutherford says: “For me, he’s the best track and field coach in the world. But I don’t have the luxury of being able to move to the US. I have to live here. I would still love to work with Dan but a huge part of that is the financial cost that led to being based out there.

“Because I’m not making any money outside of competition, I have to be in the UK for appearances and stuff like that. There might still be the chance to pop over to see him, I don’t know.” Finding a new coach is the next target — and not an easy one. As Rutherford says: “It’s not like I go, ‘right, I’ll have you’. It has to be someone who works for you and that’s a process.”

For now, the search for a new coach can wait, Rutherford’s sole focus is on getting fit.

Rutherford is an ambassador for the Asda Active campaign designed to ‘Get Britain Moving’. To see how you can get involved, visit asda.com/active

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