How Jake Wightman rebuilt his body

We discover how the British runner’s support team helped take him from the depths of despair to within fractions of another 1500m world title.

It was a school pick-up to remember in September. Andy Kay had gone to collect his daughter but had been sure to arrive early. There was something he wanted to watch while he waited in the car. 

Kay is a firefighter but also a strength and conditioning specialist who works with some of the world’s best athletes, including Jake Wightman. The latter was about to contest the men’s 1500m final at the World Championships in Tokyo and the former had his iPad at the ready. He didn’t want to miss a step. 

That the 2022 world champion stood on the start line at all was testament to a tireless team effort from his support group – including his fiancee Georgie Hartigan, future father-in-law and now coach John, physio Alex O’Gorman and Kay – that had helped piece him back together after what were some of the darkest days of Wightman’s long career.

Having been repeatedly beset by injuries since standing on top of the middle distance world in Eugene three years previously – from the fractured foot that denied him the chance to defend his title in 2023 to the hamstring problem that whipped the Olympic rug out from under him at the last minute in 2024 – he was no stranger to the rehab process. But this time it felt different. 

In February of this year, he underwent meniscus surgery in his knee. At every turn, and always just as he was on the verge of a return to racing, Wightman’s body would let him down. The setbacks were starting to take a toll. 

“Jake doesn’t really get low. He’s not a negative athlete,” says Kay. “He is the most motivated, positive, optimistic person I’ve ever met. So to see him genuinely up against it, doubting himself, it was a shock.

“For the first time that I can remember there were a lot of points where he was over-sensitised. Every ache, every little twinge, every feeling of discomfort was an alarm bell. I think a big part of the process, towards the end especially, was getting him beyond that and trusting his body, trusting the process because, rightly, he’d learned that he’d get reinjured and that it wouldn’t work out.”

Wightman concurs. “There were so many doubts – over the last year, especially,” he says.

It wasn’t time to call it a day just yet, though, and the back room team were leaned upon. Changes were made, too. In March, Wightman took the difficult decision to stop being coached by his father Geoff, while even the flow of how he received information from the team was altered, with the agreed way forward largely relayed through Georgie. With the question of whether or not this might be the 31-year-old’s last chance hanging heavy in the air, they set about their work.  

“We went right back to the drawing board,” says Kay. “Jake is a very, very intelligent athlete and he manages his team and the people around him really well. What he wanted was to put the right people together and then step away and just have one set of instructions, one contact a week and we all agreed to it.”

Each member was fully invested. 

“They’re like friends rather than colleagues,” says Wightman. “I’ve worked with Andy since 2017 and I don’t speak to him as if it was just speaking to a coach. It’s the same with everyone in our team and I hope that means that they have a bit more care about me, as much as I have more care about them. It means that even though there have been points where it hasn’t looked like being that happy an ending, potentially, everyone still persevered and believed that there could be.”

Kay certainly admits to employing a different set of skills this time around. 

“[Earlier in my career] I did personal training originally and worked with the general population,” he says. “That’s much more about someone paying you to motivate them, to keep them accountable and to show them that things are possible. 

“In athletics, particularly, I don’t often have to tap into that. Athletes just do it. That is their job. Someone that runs 80 miles a week doesn’t need me convincing them that they need to exercise. But, definitely, there was more of the soft skills, being a friend and relating to the situation. During my military career, I spent a year in rehab with three or four different injuries, and I had the same experience of when one thing’s better, then you get back to it and it’s gone again, or something else has gone, and you’re right back to square one, and it’s soul destroying. I can’t relate to being a world champion, but I get that it sucks and I know what the grind’s like, so it definitely tapped into a different part of the relationship.

“Especially with someone as positive as Jake, sometimes you do need someone to just sit with you and say: ‘Yes, this is shit. Let’s not sugarcoat it, but it will be okay, and this is how’, and that goes a long way. It’s way beyond prescribing sets and reps and exercises. That’s another big part where Jake’s physio, Alex, was really helpful.”

Diving into the detail became the order of the day, as the inter-team phone calls, zoom chats and meetings increased in regularity behind the scenes. Communication was key. 

“It was very hands-on and a lot more labour intensive than before,” says Kay. “We were putting everything under the microscope and planning every week individually, which you don’t often do. Everyone had their say, we would all contribute and we would tweak and change [as we went along]. It was very athlete focused, which I’m a big fan of. 

“It was very proactive and reactive. Any issue whatsoever, within 24 hours things were changed and a new plan was in place. It was real micro scale stuff and I think that, to get out of that rut that Jake was in, it was really important. Every minute detail we could monitor and measure, we were. It was actually a really good example of interdisciplinary team working.”

The “unsung hero” in it all, says Kay, was Georgie. It’s not so long ago that she was an elite athlete herself but she immersed herself in a new role.

“She managed a lot of the data, directly helping her dad, and she plans an awful lot of stuff,” says Kay. “We would call her team manager, doing all of this work that no one sees, and for Jake you can see how much her support keeps him going as well. They are a really good team and an amazing couple.

“But, the reality is that every ounce of work that was done was him. We were just planning things and telling him what to do, so it really is testament to his resolve.”

The new approach and careful management began to work, with Wightman regaining his fitness powers, but that development actually raised another question.

“When you haven’t got an injury, then it’s all about: ‘Are you still good enough?’,” admits the European and Commonwealth medallist.  “Every other year it’s been these injuries that have stopped me from showing it, but now it was just me. I was fit. Everyone had done their jobs, therefore I just had to go out there and prove that I still could do it, which was pretty daunting.”

The first big test arrived with the opening qualifying heat in Tokyo – a stage that proved to be chaotic as the likes of then 1500m world leader Azeddine Habz and former Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen crashed out. 

“I hadn’t raced a championship race for three years, and I hadn’t raced that well during the season,” says Wightman. “I’d done the work so it was: ‘Can I still race the champs?’. But as soon as I was midway through that heat, I knew I felt alright, and I felt good. 

“The heat was stressful, and then the semi and the final were enjoyable because I was able just to go out relaxed and do what I wanted. I didn’t have any pressure at all, so it was a pretty freeing position to be in. And that’s what I kept telling myself before – there was no expectation. I was able to go under the radar.”

Wightman had looked very comfortable in the semi-final too, but the majority of the attention still fell on the likes of young Dutchman Niels Laros and Josh Kerr. In the final the defending champion’s ruptured calf soon ruled him out of contention and opened up the medal fight. His fellow Briton strode forward. 

With 200m to go Wightman went for broke and, until the final strides of Isaac Nader’s searing finish, appeared to be about to clinch his second world title. The crowd in Japan’s National Stadium roared and, thousands of miles away, so did Kay. 

“I was screaming in my car like a maniac,” he says. “I watched him break and as soon as he did that you could just see that he was going to win a medal. And then I thought he was going to [win gold]. I was convinced.”

Nader ultimately won the fight to hit the line first. Just.

“For a second, I was a bit gutted for Jake because he didn’t get gold,” adds Kay. “But, really, it was a huge, huge win. I was sat in my car screaming and then, two minutes later, had to put down the iPad, compose myself and go and pick up my daughter. It was quite a strange afternoon! But I was so happy for him. If anyone deserves it, it really is Jake. And you can see it and hear it already, he’s completely changed his outlook now. He’s looking forwards again. I think that’s probably the best moment of my coaching career.”

Snow has been falling heavily outside of Wightman’s window as AW’s British Male Athlete of the Year chews the fat from a training stint in Flagstaff, Arizona. He admits getting back into winter training has been a “slog” but there’s a sweetness about being able to run at this time of year, rather than finding himself in rehab or on the cross trainer. There’s another busy year, with a potential farewell to the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games, to prepare for. 

“Having the ball in my own court these next few years is what I’m going to aim to do,” he says. “And it just be in my hands as to how my body is. I was stuck in a bad cycle of those problems and I feel like I’ve got off it. Hopefully that is what I need to be able to make sure that I can get the most out of my body.”