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Former 800m star explains her working partnership with husband Trevor Painter and how the couple have turned their lives upside down to guide some of Britain’s top talent
A short while before retiring as one of the world’s leading 800m runners, Jenny Meadows turned to her husband and coach Trevor Painter and uttered words that now prompt her to laugh at their sheer foolishness. “Imagine,” she said, “when I’m done we can just wake up on a Saturday morning and be normal people.”
It is the end of an exhausting week. The previous weekend, Meadows and Painter indulged in an unforgettable voyage to Las Vegas to watch U2 play in the extraordinary new Sphere venue. Unfortunately, the trip took its toll.
Painter has been holed up in bed with illness ever since returning to their Wigan home – “When he’s closing his eyes and shivering at least he can remember how good the concert was,” says Meadows – leaving his wife to run their operation solo. It is no easy task given its vast scale.
Painter’s illness has wider implications for both their extended families. So wary are the coaching couple of passing on bugs to any of their runners that their three-year-old daughter Arabella has been shuttling between sets of grandparents ever since Meadows and Painter returned from the United States, banished from the family home.
“I feel really bad because I’ve hardly seen her,” admits Meadows. “Yesterday, I did a coaching session in Manchester, drove Trevor to the doctor’s, picked Arabella and my mum up, took them to McDonald’s and then went home. I feel like I’m on supervised visits! Poor Arabella. I’m really sorry!”
Ask Meadows what she now does for a career and her answer will be entirely different to 12 months ago. Back then she was a part-time mother, part-time athlete mentor, part-time assistant coach to Painter, part-time TV commentator and pundit. Nowadays, through a steady evolution that she never expected, she has become a fully-fledged coach.
Jenny Meadows (Mark Shearman)
As much as it might be Painter’s name in brackets next to the athletes they look after, the coaching operation has progressed into a dual one with near-equal partners. Painter and Meadows; Meadows and Painter.
In no small part, it has happened out of the necessity of taking on so many athletes. Of the 25 runners Meadows and Painter look after, nine are full-time professionals, who live and train in Manchester, while the remainder are high-level amateurs or juniors, training in Wigan. A remarkable 60 per cent of them were internationals at either senior or junior level last year.
It is an enormous undertaking – too much for Painter by himself, hence the need for Meadows’ increasing levels of involvement. The pair also use Darren Borthwick – father of Olympic high jumper Emily – as an assistant to act as eyes on the ground at sessions neither of them can attend.
“It’s quite a responsibility,” says Meadows. “In the height of summer we can literally have seven different sessions going on at the same time.
“The elite group of athletes have committed to being in Manchester and moved their life there because they are putting trust in us, so Trevor and I are going to treat them just how we did my career: no stone left unturned. We do make it quite hard work for ourselves. When we get to a major champs, it’s like holiday time.”
Trevor Painter and Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)
In a professional cohort that includes world 4x400m relay medallist Lewis Davey, multiple Irish record-holder Sarah Healy and fast-improving 1500m runner Georgia Bell, there is no doubting who takes top billing.
Keely Hodgkinson, the Olympic and two-time world 800m silver medallist, joined the group from her childhood coach at the end of 2019. At the time, Painter was largely running a one-man operation, with Meadows a sounding board to bounce ideas off. Hodgkinson was the first athlete to change that, with Meadows fostering a close relationship with the then teenager and her family.
During her own illustrious career, Meadows earned multiple world and European 800m medals – as well as many more she was denied by athletes subsequently banned for doping offences – under Painter’s charge. She explains how Hodgkinson is fortunate to benefit from the decades of experience the pair have gleaned together.
“We had to figure it all out ourselves,” says Meadows. “Keely certainly doesn’t have any shortcuts to the top because she has to put in all the hard work, but I would have loved someone just to tell me what to do without thinking. That’s the life Keely is very fortunate to have.
Training hard in South Africa (Getty)
“With me, a lot of the time Trevor was a young coach trying to work out his philosophy and what world-class coaching takes. It was quite stressful for me as an athlete because Trevor was still on that journey. I didn’t have Trevor in the capacity that Keely has him.
“He did such a good job for me, but I was more emotionally and physically involved in decisions in my career because I had to be. A rest day for me wasn’t a rest day that Keely has.
“Keely can just be told what to do. We’ve earned that trust and respect over the years. Trevor’s in a place now where he just knows through intuition and experience.”
While Painter still decides the numbers that determine the details of training sessions – “he knows all the science behind it” – Meadows’ own vast lived experience as an international athlete means she has bountiful wisdom off the track that she can pass on.
Tasked with looking after one of the best British athletes of the current generation in Hodgkinson, Meadows’ role extends far beyond simply guiding her in spikes; when you sign up with Meadows and Painter, you receive a life coach as much as an athletics coach.
By her own admission, Meadows was something of a “robot” during her running career. “I’d think that taking any break was reckless and would feel guilty,” she says. “We now know there are times when Keely needs to be her age [she turns 22 at the start of March] and seize opportunities.”
Keely Hodgkinson and Arabella (Getty)
A few months ago came the perfect example. Hodgkinson was invited to attend the prestigious British Vogue ‘Forces For Changes’ event the day after she was due to fly to a winter training camp in South Africa.
“Keely said she wouldn’t be able to go because of the camp, but I really don’t want her to come to the end of her career and think she didn’t have fun and take opportunities,” says Meadows.
“I spoke to Trevor and said if she comes to South Africa three days later what would she really miss? So I called her back and said she should go. That’s sort of my role sometimes to go between Trevor and the other athletes, and sort logistics.
“I’m so pleased she went because she loved it. There have to be those moments where you let them not be athletes, and go off and have some fun.”
Keely Hodgkinson with coach Trevor Painter (Getty)
There was another crucial factor in Meadows encouraging Hodgkinson to accept the Vogue invitation: she was injured.
While the merits of an indoor season are much debated within the sport, Meadows has always been an advocate, rarely passing up the opportunity to race on the boards and winning multiple indoor medals during her career. Having never competed indoors before joining Meadows and Painter, Hodgkinson has since won two European indoor titles and become the fastest female indoor 800m runner for more than 20 years.
The plan had been to win a first global title at the Glasgow World Indoor Championships, where she would have hoped to challenge Jolanda Ceplak’s world record, but a torn knee ligament in November forced a change.
“There was quite a lot of anxiety knowing what training sessions she should be doing in December and she wasn’t doing them,” says Meadows. “But we’re in this sport for one reason this year, which is the Paris Olympics. So we just removed indoors this year.
“The bigger picture is Paris. It’s a big responsibility coaching someone like Keely.”
Keely Hodgkinson gets stuck into beach work (Getty)
So much for waking up on a Saturday morning and having the luxury of nothing to do. The diary is packed even on rest days, with Meadows due to jump on a train as soon as we finish ω speaking to head into Manchester to introduce an athlete to a sponsor.
“To be honest, I didn’t realise how much responsibility coaching would entail,” she admits. Trevor and I do not switch off. It’s a seven-day job.”
Recently, Meadows and Painter have not only brought Arabella along on their warm-weather training camps, but also taken at least one grandparent to help with childcare while they are away. A meticulously detailed colour-coded schedule reveals precisely which family member is due to be where at any given time. Arabella even has a balance bike that lives at Hodgkinson’s home to occupy her when they visit.
From the outside, the constant logistical conundrum is enough to cause a headache. But Meadows shrugs it off as what they signed up for.
“We really care for all our athletes,” she says. “Some of them will reach the top like Keely, some will reach major championship finals, some will go to global champs, some will win an English Schools title and that’s where their journey ends.
“But it’s what sport gives you after that. We just want to look back and say people had fun, people liked us as coaches and we’d done our best for them. I think we’re doing a good job.”
As Painter’s bed-ridden state has revealed, it is no wonder it requires two of them to pull it off.
» This article first appeared in the March issue of AW magazine, which you can buy here
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