Lone wolf Phillips Idowu anxious to hunt down the pack in Barcelona

This article titled “Lone wolf Phillips Idowu anxious to hunt down the pack in Barcelona” was written by Anna Kessel, for The Observer on Saturday 17th July 2010 23.06 UTC

“High five, Angel,” says Phillips Idowu to his two-year-old Japanese akita. Despite the heavy rain, on a grey afternoon in Birmingham, Angel duly obliges the triple jump world champion with a paw and a loving gaze.

The feeling is mutual. Idowu bought Angel in 2008, just as his career really began to take off: he has since won three major medals in two years – a world indoor title, an Olympic silver medal and the world outdoor title in Berlin last summer.

Those first few months together the two were inseparable as Angel – kitted out in stylish accessories – accompanied Idowu to his athletics meets, sitting in the back of his Mercedes SLK. “Through the whole indoor season of 2008 she came everywhere with me,” he says, laughing. “I made sure I booked hotels that allowed dogs. She’d stay in the hotel and I’d pretty much stay in the room with her the whole day. Then I’d rush to the competition, warm up, compete and rush back to see her.”

These days Angel has outgrown the SLK and become too noisy for hotel rooms (she barks at room service), “so I had to buy a new car especially to cart her around” the 31-year-old says. “I got an M-class Mercedes – a proper dog car. There’s her hair all round the back of it.” The two are still so attached that if Angel hears Idowu talking on TV she goes berserk.

If Idowu were a dog, what type of dog would he be? It is a cheesy question, but it provides a revealing answer. “I’d be a husky because I’m just ignorant,” he laughs. “Huskies don’t listen. They’re really smart, but they’re hard to train – they won’t do it unless it’s worth their while. If you let them off the lead and they want to run, they’ll go and they won’t come back.”

The description fits Idowu to a tee. The maverick of the British team, he has had coaches and managers alike tearing their hair out as he routinely flouts convention. On one infamous occasion in 2008 he stayed out until 4am clubbing with friends before competing at the Olympic trials in Birmingham. “But I pulled out a world leading jump the next day,” he says, cheekily, “so no one could say nothing.”

Up in the stands of the Alexander Stadium, sheltering from the rain with Angel lying neatly at his feet, he pauses to reflect. “I have matured and I’ve been able to have a bit more control over my ways, but it’s still ingrained in there.” He lets loose a wry smile. “I have certain ways. I can be stubborn. I like to do things my way.”

In fact Idowu is so entrenched in his ways that even Charles van Commenee, Britain’s head coach and a notorious disciplinarian, has had to allow him free reign. “Everyone [else in the GB team] seems to conform… but I know if I do things my way I get results. Which is why Charles just pretty much lets me do what I want to do. I don’t want to stop myself from doing what I want to do. Athletics takes up so much of your life it’s restrictive enough anyway.”

Idowu’s instinct meant that he traded defending his world indoor title in Doha earlier this year to stay home for the delayed birth of his son. At the time Van Commenee expressed disappointment at the decision. “Oh well,” says Idowu breezily, “that’s him. Charles don’t have kids so he’ll never know. He can be disappointed, but it’s my decision, it’s my choice, it’s my medal, it’s my title. It’s got nothing to do with him. Be disappointed, boy, it doesn’t make a difference. I was at home and I was happy.”

Idowu is clear on where his priorities lie. “I would always give up a medal for the birth of my child. I wanted to be around the first couple of weeks after that as well. It’s a massive change, my daughter’s got to get used to having a brother around and I weren’t going to leave Carlita [his girlfriend] with two kids and I’m off on the other side of the world. It was in my plan to go and defend my title, but it just didn’t work out that way.”

While Idowu stayed home with the family and Angel – who, incidentally, is terrified of his kids: “she takes a wide berth, boy!” – a young Frenchman named Teddy Tamgho competed in Doha and took the world by storm, setting a world indoor record with a huge leap of 17.90m.

Idowu recalls watching the competition on television and, even at the memory of it, is lost for words. “When I saw his last-round jump, his world record that was… that was… I couldn’t say nothing. There was no words. He just came charging down. That was a big jump. I sent him a Facebook message after that saying ‘world champ’. Exclamation mark.”

Tamgho followed up with the third-longest leap in history, 17.98m, at a meeting in New York last month. The young star, only 21, credits Idowu with helping his breakthrough as the more experienced jumper passed on support and advice. But a recent newspaper article suggested otherwise, describing Idowu as “dismissing” Tamgho for a one-hit wonder.

“That piece really pissed me off,” Idowu says, characteristically blunt. “I can’t stand that. There was nothing in the conversation that day that came across negative about Teddy at all. I don’t bad mouth any of my competitors. I looked on the internet and that story went round the world. And it’s not just what Teddy might have thought seeing it, but what everyone else thought – that I must be arrogant, some big head having a go at some kid. He’s just a kid, you know. It makes me look like an arsehole.”

“When he jumped that 17.98 I was happy for him, I gave him a hug, I was like…” he says, then pauses. “I actually sent Teddy a message just to explain. I forwarded him the article and said: ‘Don’t take no notice, I wasn’t dissing you, it was some journalist twisting things.’

“What upsets me the most is that when I was coming through there were times when [the world record holder] Jonathan Edwards wasn’t as supportive of me as he could have been. Back then I was the young kid and he wasn’t there for me, so how would that make me look if I turned round and did the same thing to Teddy?”

The relationship between Idowu and the media has often been strained. The Hackney-born jumper says he is too often interpreted on a superficial basis, as “six foot five, piercings, tattoos and dyed hair”. He shrugs. “But that’s just a look, it has nothing to do with my personality.” When he competes there is a swagger to his walk, but away from the track Idowu is softly spoken and often shy.

“I guess it’s just more fun for them to portray me as a bad guy or someone who’s up in peoples’ faces or dissing my competitors,” he says. “It will sell a lot more papers. It’s conflict, it’s beef, people are interested in stuff like that. But that’s not me, that’s not me at all.”

So far this season Idowu has been keeping a low profile. With a week to go before the start of the European championships he is focusing on the final details of his jump. It has been a tricky season, slowed by a virus, but his best effort of 17.48 is enough to rank him third in the world this year. And he has dyed his hair again, so things must be looking up. “I thought: ‘Let me just brighten myself up a bit’,” he says with a grin. “I’m starting to feel good. I didn’t go red because red is my ‘let’s go’ colour. But I’m on the way there and it showed in my performance. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, Barcelona, I’ll be back to red and back to the medals.”

With Tamgho now a doubt, having withdrawn from last week’s Diamond League fixture in Paris because of calf and hamstring problems, it may just be Edwards’s old nemesis, Christian Olsson, of Sweden, with whom Idowu will be left to do battle.

One thing is for certain, without an outdoor European medal on his CV (in 2006 Idowu finished fifth), this is one competition he will not want to miss. Along with the Olympic title he lost so narrowly in Beijing, a European medal is one of the lingering ambitions he still burns for. And as long as that is the case, he says, the rest of his medal collection will stay untouched in a box in the attic.

“I don’t want them around me in the house,” he says quietly, ruffling Angel’s ears. “I don’t need to see them. If I had them out now that would be like saying I’ve reached the pinnacle of my achievements. But I haven’t, not by a long way, boy.”

As he prepares to head home, Idowu dons a Star Wars stormtrooper-themed cap to stave off the rain. “They had a C-3PO one which was gold,” he says, momentarily brightening. “But I didn’t want to be wearing a gold cap because, you know, people might think I’m trying to say something…” he trails off. There he goes again, one minute straight-talking, the next shy and self-conscious. Idowu, the gold-plated enigma.

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