We converse to a person who has used his wealth to help a lot of Britain’s best athletes on the trail to success
Round 4 years in the past, Barrie Wells thought his days of funding athletes have been over. Since 2008 the millionaire benefactor had given a complete of roughly £2 million to Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Jess Ennis-Hill and fellow Brits to spice up their medal probabilities at main championships.
Because the pandemic unfolded, he centered his efforts on his Box4Kids scheme as an alternative, but issues modified when he acquired a telephone name from Jenny Meadows, one of many athletes he used to assist.
“I had just about stopped funding particular person athletes except somebody unbelievable got here out the woodwork,” Wells remembers. “However Jenny and her husband Trevor advised me a couple of younger athlete referred to as Keely and the form of occasions she was working.
“I checked out what she was doing and I believed ‘that is somebody distinctive’. I discovered she had an honest cross-country background but in addition this base velocity. I didn’t wish to return to funding athletes, however Keely appeared relatively particular.”
Keely Hodgkinson and Barrie Wells
Wells made his fortune creating and promoting companies and, as an enormous athletics fanatic and former athlete himself, he has been on a mission for the previous 16 years serving to British athletes with funding.
In March 2020, simply days earlier than the primary Covid lockdown within the UK, I visited Wells in his workplaces in Lancaster and in a subsequent function dubbed him “essentially the most beneficiant man in British athletics”. Now, with the Paris Olympics in full swing, I tracked him down on the Stade de France a few days after Hodgkinson struck Olympic gold to ask him about how he got here to assist the 800m star.
“We checked out her social media and background,” he recollects, “and she or he was this well-behaved lady who was centered on being an athlete. I actually received on together with her and I preferred her mum and pa as effectively. So I got here on board and requested what I might do.”
Wells doesn’t simply throw cash at athletes. “I must know their plan,” he says.
With Ennis-Hill it was assist with physiotherapy and entry to further javelin teaching from Mick Hill. For Hodgkinson, she wanted to get away for warm-weather coaching throughout the pandemic along with serving to get Painter to the holding camp forward of the Tokyo Video games.
Keely Hodgkinson celebrates with Trevor Painter (Getty)
Quickly, the funding paid off as she received Olympic silver in Tokyo. “Since then I don’t actually need to assist her,” says Wells, “as she earns sufficient cash herself.”
Hodgkinson has not been an entire one-off, both. Wells has helped Molly Caudery in current months, though the British pole vault record-holder had a nightmare in Paris as she did not make the ultimate.
Like Hodgkinson, Wells made an exception for Caudery, however on this event as a result of he has a tender spot for her occasion. His grandfather was Ernest Latimer Stones, a world record-holder for the pole vault within the Eighteen Eighties, so when he ran into Caudery’s coach Scott Simpson sooner or later in a resort carry, he agreed to assist with a few of her international journey in her quest to turn out to be the world’s No.1 pole vaulter.
Amusingly, although, Wells feels Caudery is commonly too embarrassed to ask him to pay for flight upgrades in order that she will be able to stretch her legs on long-haul journeys due to the sheer value!
A rising star, Caudery will hope for extra success on the World Championships in Tokyo subsequent yr. Wells did nevertheless nonetheless have a lot to cheer in Paris, as his self-confessed favorite athlete, Johnson-Thompson, received her first Olympic medal with heptathlon silver.
Molly Caudery (Getty)
His favouritism is as a result of he first met KJT again in 2008 when she was simply 15 and he started offering her with funding to assist together with her coaching. Since then, the 2 have turn out to be shut mates and Johnson-Thompson has been Patron of the Barrie Wells Belief since 2012.
In recognition for all the assistance he has given her, the heptathlon star has paid the millionaire again in spades by turning into an everyday host at his Box4Kids occasions.
Such is the scale of the scheme, one current weekend noticed 24 Box4Kids occasions held across the nation and it has given good experiences to round 20,000 significantly or terminally in poor health kids at occasions starting from the London Diamond League to soccer matches at Anfield – the house of Wells’ and KJT’s beloved Liverpool FC.
Wells enjoys seeing his athletes recognising the assist that he initially gave them. He appreciated, for instance, that Hodgkinson stopping throughout her lap of honour on the Stade de France to present him a hug within the stands, whereas her mum, Rachel, hosts Box4Kids occasions at Outdated Trafford, a no-go space for a die-hard Liverpool fan after all.
“Some athletes see it as a ‘transactional relationship’,” says Wells, “which is a bit unhappy to see. When their funding involves an finish, I don’t hear from them once more. However with others, they continue to be in contact.
“An incredible instance is Dai Greene. He was fourth within the hurdles and relay at London 2012 and his funding got here to an finish however he nonetheless devotes about 4 weekends a yr to internet hosting Box4Kids, which is very nice.”
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