Meet the coach: Yannick Tregaro

We speak to the Swede who took Christian Olsson to global triple jump success and is guiding British high jump record-holder Morgan Lake.

Yannick Tregaro was inspired to become a high jumper after watching Sweden’s Patrik Sjöberg break the world record in 1987 (2.42m). He took up athletics at the age of 11, and at 18 – after jumping a personal best of 2.17m – he represented Sweden at the 1996 World Junior Championships in Sydney, Australia.

Tregaro left school with a goal “to make the world or European elite as a senior athlete”; instead, he made his name as a successful and well-respected coach, guiding Sweden’s triple jump national record-holder Christian Olsson to Olympic, world and European titles. 

He currently coaches a group of athletes based in Gothenburg including former world and European U20 triple jump champion and Swedish junior record-holder Gabriel Wallmark, former European U20 100m hurdles champion and long jump silver medallist Tilda Johansson (Sweden), and Great Britain’s former world and European U20 high jump champion Morgan Lake, who set a national record of 2.00m in 2025.

What was one of your most memorable moments as a young athlete?

My friend and I both wanted to try athletics and I can still remember the first time we called the club. The coach told us to come to the arena; there was a fence around it and we were looking in, we were a little bit nervous, then we saw Patrik…it was just so cool to see my idol for real for the first time. 

Once we were inside the arena we could see Patrik doing his stuff close up, so it was difficult for us to focus on our meeting with the coach! That was my first love in some way of athletics, that you could so easily get into an environment that was so inspiring. I still get goosebumps now and that’s something that has stayed with me still, that inspiration and that feeling inside.

One year later I had the same coach as Patrik, Viljo Nousiainen*, and Patrik became almost like a big brother to me.

How did you get into coaching?

Viljo died in June 1999. It was a shock, but before that I was already really curious about training and why we did things. I was always asking: “Why do we do this?”, and looking at Patrik as well as Viljo’s other good athletes and trying to understand the reasoning behind doing certain things. I loved to watch old high jump and triple jump movies, and when I was 17 I did a course to lead young athletes in summer holiday camps run by the club.

I think I was really lucky in a way because my best friend was Christian Olsson. He’s two years younger than me and we were training together. I was better than him at that time, but he was developing fast. When Viljo died I didn’t see that there was another coach who could give me what I wanted, so I felt like I wanted to coach myself. Then Christian asked me if he could train together with me, so that was the start of my coaching career.

At the beginning of that summer I beat him, but he just became better and better and improved so much. He qualified for the European Juniors, won two medals, and all of a sudden I was this really young high jumper who coached his friend who was now the European champion in high jump and silver medallist in triple jump. 

At the start, Christian was still asking: “Is Yannick the right coach for me?”, and I remember there were discussions with the Swedish Olympic Committee and the athletics federation – they thought because Christian was such a good talent he might need a more experienced or better coach. They were sceptical, and Christian was also sceptical, always asking a lot of questions about why we did things. But it was so important for me because he was trying to test me, to see if I knew what I was doing, and I think that was a really good thing. 

I have so many memories when I think about this, but of course, to have an athlete like Christian as my first athlete was so beneficial for me. He was a super talent – he was so co-ordinated and good technically (that was Viljo’s strong side, working with co-ordination, technique and rhythm) – and he kept on developing really fast. 

Who has been your greatest coaching influence?

My success with Christian was a mix of skill and what I’d seen Viljo do with Patrik over the years. Because I’d spent a lot of time with them on training camps and at championships, I had this incredible insight into how you coached a world class athlete. Even though I was inexperienced as a coach, the big championships environment was not new to me, and to see how Patrik prepared for those events, that was something I think was really unique.

Viljo was really good at doing diaries. I had diaries of my own training for the last six or seven years, but also what Patrik had been doing, so of course I copied a lot from that and looked back to see, when I was in really good shape, what did I do in the weeks before? Or what led to that performance? That was a goldmine. I also had a lot of answers just because I’d been in the environment with those athletes and I’d learned what some coaches might take a lifetime to learn.

I still think one of the important things for me was that I was so curious when I was young. Viljo was a really creative coach and I wanted to experience and try new things and be open to different ideas. 

When I lecture I talk about the “art” coach and the “excel” coach. Even though he wrote the diaries and did the planning, Viljo was very much the “art” coach. He didn’t plan specifically every exercise; he looked at us and what we needed. That was one of his coaching strengths, and it’s mine, too.

Then, of course, I wanted to learn more and I got selected for a super coach programme created by the then-head coach of Swedish Athletics, together with a behaviour scientist and the Swedish Olympic Committee, where they brought together around 20 of the best coaches in Sweden. I think we met six times a year and it was about getting to know each other, opening up, talking about our personal stories, and then of course to educate ourselves. Those coaches, who included Agne Bergvall [Carolina Klüft’s coach] and Benke Blomkvist [well-known sprints coach] became my best friends who I could ask anything. I think that programme is the answer to why Swedish athletics was so good in the early 2000s.

How did your coaching set-up evolve?

That first summer, 1999, I only coached Christian, but when the summer ended I decided to take on all of the athletes that Viljo coached who were younger than me. 

Then I had a group, and I always think that a strong group is an important tool to develop athletes. There’s so much energy in a group, and if everyone gives energy, you automatically get energy back. I really love the environment you can create. 

There will always be extroverts and introverts, but it’s very important to see everyone for who they are and give them their time in the spotlight. When someone becomes a little bit quiet it’s so easy to say: “Come on, join us!”, and you become more extrovert and they just become more introverted and close down. To see shy, introverted people grow – not that they need to be extrovert, but just to take part and contribute, and to get the extrovert people to listen more and be more understanding – that was very cool.

When people in a group trust each other and they can be themselves, that’s when they perform. That’s something that’s really important for me in coaching. To get people to perform is not just what you do technically and physically, it’s also how you make them feel as a human person. I think maybe that’s even more important than what you do, but it can sometimes be difficult to get everyone to buy into that philosophy.

Morgan obviously wants to develop and I always say: “Either you develop or you die”, and that’s how it is. It’s so important that she develops, but it doesn’t always need to be the high jump PB that improves. You can feel like you’re developing in other areas, physically, mentally and technically, and if that happens, then eventually the results will come.

What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to a new or aspiring coach? 

Some coaches create a training system that they believe in and they put the athlete into the system, but I wanted to be a little bit the opposite and create the system around the athlete. So you have to figure out what are the athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, how do you develop that athlete, and what does that athlete need to reach their potential? That’s always my goal, to get every athlete I coach to reach 100 per cent of their own potential. 

Athletics can actually be really unfair at times. Athletes can train perfectly and be so motivated and determined and do everything right and they’re still not giving such good performances, while some other athletes can be assholes, like they just show up sometimes and they can perform really well. I think you need to be able to create a person that understands that. 

Having balance is important, too – never stop playing. As I learned more about technique and strength and development, I became more and more specific. I felt like I went from being this open, playful coach to being more and more narrow. All the education I did pointed to being more specific, but it’s important that you still “play” and use the nervous system in different ways. 

Finally, if you want to reach 100 per cent of your potential you don’t need to become the world’s best triple jumper, high jumper or whatever, you need to have a plan and you need to get the plan done. Period. I don’t accept “no” for an answer if I can help my athletes. If it’s not possible to do what we planned then we need to do the second-best thing and figure it out. Having an elite mindset as a coach and athlete is about finding solutions to get things done.