The British sprinter talks about his perfect indoor season in 2025, preparing to defend his world 60m title, fatherhood and trying to mix things up on the track this summer.
A glance at Jeremiah Azu’s recent indoor season shows that he has enjoyed a perfect winter. Four championships – the Welsh, British, European and World Championships – produced 4 gold medals in the 60m. He was never beaten, even in the preliminary round. Perhaps most notably, he improved his times at each round in all four championships; the same formula, opening steadily in the heat, speeding up the gear in the semi-final and leading the podium in the final.
Only the gaps in his racing calendar suggest how spectacularly unlikely those few months of early 2025 career progression were, missing a single race outside of those four events.
Azu was, in fact, just days after being knocked out of the British Championship, a sliding-door moment that would end his indoor season when it had barely begun. International matches were confirmed and flights booked for a European tour, only for a minor injury to sideline him and try his luck in Birmingham with minimal preparation.
Then, just two days after a British victory that almost never happened, his first child, Azaire, was born, ruling him out of any further racing with the Europeans, causing a sudden and significant lack of sleep, halting his body’s efforts to properly repair itself. So things were a little bumpy. Not that his medal collection gives any indication.
“The combination of becoming a father and the setbacks I was facing, all of those things together helped me put it all on track,” he says. “Honestly, I think I was running on adrenaline the whole time. I definitely think it’s a physiological response. At that moment when you have a child, everything becomes so much stronger. You are so alert. I think that contributed to my performance success.”
One of the beautiful things about athletics is the whole range of characters that the sport attracts; on one starting line there can be showmen, poker-faced, deadly focused and reserved. Then there’s Azu, a preacher’s son who can sometimes smile, sometimes shout, but always exudes an unwavering self-confidence.
“At the forefront of my mind, I’m just myself,” says the 24-year-old. “I think it’s very important for people to be themselves in that environment. I am so blessed with this talent that I can use it to entertain and inspire people. In those moments, you just have to put yourself into it, because that’s how you get the best out of yourself.
“I am quite a talkative, charismatic person. I’m sure. How do you see me on the track, how do you see me behind closed doors? It’s a privilege to be in those situations, so I try to enjoy it as much as I can. It was instilled in me even before I knew it, I heard God’s word and the positivity that came out of my life.”
Azu’s confidence that he can successfully defend his 60m crown at next month’s World Indoor Championships is not unfounded. In addition to mid-winter and Azaire’s arrival, Azu’s 2025 medal rush also comes amid the upheaval of moving to another country.
After working with Marco Airale for two years in Italy, around the time he broke 10 seconds in the 100m for the first time and made his Olympic debut, he decided to return to his hometown of Cardiff and rejoin his former coach, Helen James, who had originally taken him from football to athletics when he was 16.
“Having a family was the biggest factor,” Azu explains. “Traveling back and forth between Italy and the UK with a baby would not have been easy. So I decided to put my family first. I think it helps me have a better balance. You may call athletics a job, but being someone’s father is forever. It’s bigger than anything. I should have put that first.
“Inside wasn’t really on the radar last year because of all those things. If I was able to achieve what I did because I didn’t train much, that’s why I feel so confident about myself that 2026.
Short and powerful out of the blocks, Azu has what could be considered the ideal build for the 60m sprint. But he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into the shorter range, nor do the performances suggest he should be.
His identical winning time of 6.49 at last year’s European and World Indoor Championships put him in elite company as one of five British sprinters to run under 6.50 for the 60m and 10 for the 100m.
It was the reason he was disappointed to be eliminated in the semi-finals of last summer’s World Championships 100m, where he clocked 10.05. “All things considered, even getting there was a huge positive,” he says. “But I don’t like to look at things in perspective. My goal was to reach the final and I didn’t make it.”
This summer features the dual targets of the home Commonwealth Games and the European Championships, the former of which offers a rare opportunity to wear the red vest of his home nation. If they qualify, the aim is for a quartet of sprinters in James’ training squad, which also includes the likes of Sam Gordon, Josh Brown and Azu’s younger brother Alex, to make the Welsh 4x100m team.
“I can’t wait to run in Wales,” she says. “It’s a completely different atmosphere. It’s a family and a community, especially as most of us train from the same facility in Cardiff. Hearing the Welsh national anthem, I think I’ll struggle to stay composed. We hear the British national anthem a lot in sport, but hearing the Welsh anthem from an athletics point of view would be huge.”
Aiming to double up in the 100m and 200m at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, Azu also aims to test herself more over the longer sprint distance this summer, making a rare 200m run as a senior athlete.
“One of the things that I think was positive for me was that I came to athletics quite late because I didn’t really understand what I was doing,” he explains. “I was just competing. I think that helped because when you start overcomplicating it, you can see a lot of people are so great all year long, but when they come to the championships, they struggle.
“But one of the drawbacks is the number of years of running that other people have compared me to, so I’ve got to bring that 200 in.
Until then is the defense of his world 60m crown. a burden that Azu takes seriously as one of the spearheads of the British team this winter.
“This quote from Spiderman is: “With great power comes great responsibility,” he says. “People expect things now. I am always the person who is going to support myself. I know I put in the work, but God also gave me this talent. I can stand at first confident that he has put me in this position. When I’m like that myself, that combination is pretty dangerous. The indoor space has the potential to be a big spectacle this year.”
Last winter, she says, “the hardest part was leaving my partner and baby at home to run around the world. Now following his father to half a dozen different countries in his first year, Azair will be in the stands wherever Azu competes this year.
It’s all part of a quieter family life, because if last year’s indoor season was a happy accident, now Azu is looking to show what he can do without distractions.
