COACH JOHN POWELL RECEIVES THE MBE

Trackspeed1 UK coach John Powell has been awarded the MBE for services to Athletics. His name is included in The Queen's birthday Honours List today (Saturday 15/6) writes a South London journalist.

The 54-year-old speed coach, who has been coaching athletes from the ground floor right the way through to the Olympic and Commonwealth Games and various World and European Championships for over 37 years, is bestowed with the ultimate accolade any British Citizen can receive.

Over his virtually four decades in the sport, John has fulfilled admin', management, planning, organizational, and of course coaching roles since his school PE teacher thrust a club membership form in his hand for Herne Hill Harriers in 1975.

Since then he has held offices such as Herne Hill Junior Captain, Founder and Team Manager of the hugely successful Blackheath Harriers youth scheme in the 80s and 90's, and then lead Belgrave Harriers to National Junior League titles in the late 90's and early 2000's.

Along the way, he has sat on numerous local, regional and national committees, and was secretary of the AAA of England Track and Field set-up for a time.  He has managed or coached any number of England or Great Britain teams at international events, and was a part of the coaching team on TeamGB in Athens and London.


Trackspeed1 UK coach John Powell - seen here carrying the Olympic
Torch at Crystal Palace last year - has been Honoured by The Queen
in her 2013 Birthday Honours List

John's big claim to fame however, has been the way he has developed young talents into senior internationals, and in achieving this his contribution to certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of young lives over the years has been colossal.

The former Police Superintendent, who retired from the London force late in 2011 after over 30 years' service, also set up the Met-Track project which has gone from strength to strength in London, using sport as a medium to push young lives back into positive pathways.  He recently gained National Lottery support for this to the tune of £300,000 over 3 years.

The notification of John's Honour came last month and arrived just 2 hours after he had landed at Gatwick after 5 weeks' warm weather training in the USA:

"I was heavily jet-lagged, and at first thought it must be something to do with the tax man when I saw the envelope, but when I read it, my reaction scared my one year-old half to death!," he said.

"Obviously I'm totally humbled by this. It came completely out of the blue, and quite honestly I am totally blown away by it."

John will hear over the next few months the exact date he is to be summoned to Buckingham Palace to receive the award, which could round off a pretty spectacular year with his wife due to give birth to his second child in 22 months in early December!

The citation for his MBE - which stands for 'Member of the British Empire' - reads : "Athletics coach. Services to Athletics'. It will be the second award he has received in the last 2 years, having won the England Athletics London Region 'Services to Coaching Award' in 2011. 

John, who is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), also holds the Metropolitan Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, The Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal 2002, and The Queen's Jubilee Medal for public service 2012.  His name is added alongside numerous household names in British Athletics, including Phillips Idowu MBE (whom he used to coach as a junior), Jessica Ennis MBE and Mark Lewis-Francis MBE among many others, and coach Malcolm Arnold MBE, who was Honoured last year.

JOHN V. POWELL MBE, FRSA

Above: the letter received notifying John of his Honour.

 

FAWWAZ HITS FORM ON TIME

Trackspeed1 UK's youngest sprinter, 15-year-old Fawwaz Okunola, has hit form just at the right time as he warms up for the highlights of hi summer track season.

Competing in an open meeting at Lee Valley last Wednesday he clocked one of the fastest times in the UK for an under-17 over 200 metres of 22.03s, adding a 10.86s 100 metres sprint over the shorter distance.

Both performances were lifetime bests, an both came just before the qualifying London Schools Championships, where selection is finalised for the prestigious English Schools Championships.

The London event, at Battersea Park, suffered from cold headwinds which slowed all the sprinters down, but Fawwaz held off traditionally strong opposition in the sprints to win the 100m final in a hand-timed 10.9s.  He opted out of the 200m to protect an aching hamstring.

"Fawwaz has progressed exceedingly well since he joined the squad," said his coach John Powell, "and this is having only really trained with us for half the winter.  Next time round he will be stronger and fitter, so his potential is very real."

It was a clean sweep of medals for Trackspeed1 UK sprinters in the Londons, with training partner Frederick Afrifa securing 200m gold in the under-17 final after a super bend that swept most of the opposition away in the first half of the race.  He clocked 22.6s into a fierce breeze, although Powell assured him afterwards that this was nowhere near where he could be.

"Frederick suffered a niggle in his hip at just the wrong time during his preparation," John explained, "and that has affected the end result in his running this summer. He is a potential sub-22 second 200m athlete now, never mind in the future, and it's just tragic that he hasn't yet been able to reproduce the form that promised to take him to the World Youth Championships for Italy later this summer."

The third Trackspeed1 UK athlete taking part at Battersea had dragged himself out of his sick bed t ensure his English Schools place was assured.  Nathan Gilbert had been posting personal bests over 100 metres all season, but contracted a flu bug at the beginning of the week.

Although described by his coach as 'rather rough' his performance was sufficient to make him a virtual certainty for the Birmingham nationals, after he cinched silver in the Senior Boys final in a rapid 10.8s which was pretty much level with his personal best 10.73, although the latter was wind-assisted!

Just 48 hours later some of the Trackspeed1 UK Academy athletes braved the coldest night of June so far at Norman Park, Bromley.  The highlight here were two personal bests by Peter Olusakin who clocked wind legal times of 11.95s and 24.53s.