While preparing to start his 2025 campaign in Rome, the British looks back in the season that made him stand out
Charlie Dobson expects the new season to increase just where the last one was. The 25 -year -old will open his 2025 campaign in Rome Diamond League on June 6, after a year of work that firmly established it as one of the fastest athletes in Great Britain.
His 2024 season was no less than a transformative. Dobson begged with a silver medal in the 400 meters in the European Championship, and closed the year winning the Diamond League final in Brussels, a race that had just expected to qualify for a few days before. That unexpected victory limited a season full of milestones, which included a new personal personnel of 44.23 in the 400m, which makes it the second British of all time Matthew Hudson-Smith.
As Dobson said: “I think 400m is an event that finds you instead of the other way around.” It is a distance that was originally part of your plan. Under previously 200 meters, including a fourth place in the European Championship of 2022, Dobson made the movement after the injuries to high intensity Sprint training became too frequent.
In addition to his victory of Diamond League and his best best staff, the athlete Puma also helped the GB team to claim bronze in the 4x400m male relay at the Paris Olympic Games. The time of the 2: 55.83 team not only assured an end of the stage, but also broke a European record that had been maintained since 1996.
But the way to this point has a soft spike. A series of injuries approximately several years, including a serious stress fracture in 2021 duration of a heating in the world relay of athletics, forced him to lose a whole season and presented the biggest challenge of his career so far.
Now completely shape and focused, Dobson has already helped ensure the place of Britain in the 4x400m male relay in the next world championship after its performance in world relay in May. The following goal? To qualify individually and make the 400m final in Tokyo, and once there, he knows that everything is possible.
We meet Dobson before his first game of the season to learn more about his passions on and off the track, from engineering and golf to his ambitions for the following year.
What is your greatest achievement?
My greatest achievement so far has to be 2024 in general. I started with the European Championship, winning a silver medal there, and then I went on to represent the GB team in the Olympic Games. We arrive home with a bronze medal in the relay and in the process of that we establish a European/British record that remained for 20 years odd. We ended the year winning the Diamond League final in Brussels.
If I had to point out one thing, it would probably be the final of the Diamond League, it is a quite remarkable achievement. Three or four days before the final, we only know that we were going to be in the races and then we had to book some train tickets for Brussels.
The structure of the League of Diamonds means that you must win a certain number of points to finish in the top eight. After the last event, I had the tenth place and I had to wait for two people to abandon some tens. So we ended up looking on Monday, we traveled on Wednesday and the race was Friday.
What is the biggest challenge you have to overcome?
As for an athlete, he definitely has leg injuries. He certainly has bones an easy trip to get to where I am now. The last three or four years I have really fought with minor injuries, such as simple hamstrings that arrive at the wrong time until large things such as stress fractures. I think dealing with a stress fracture was the greatest that I had to overcome because I had to take a whole year.
What is the best of being a professional athlete?
It is best to be able to do what I love every day. The saying: You never work one day in your life if you are doing what you love, that’s what I am doing right now.
What are your goals for the rest of the year?
The main ambition for this year is definitely to reach the final in the World Championship in Tokyo and once you are in the final, everything that may happen, so I will go for a medal.
Also because to start the season getting more and more experience in the race. That is something massive to me is to learn the event. [400m] And learn to run races differently, as well as overcome different setbacks inside the races.
When you are standing in the exit line, what is going through your mind?
When I go to the blocks, I am preparing and waiting that the beginning of all those who are real do not pass much through my head. At that time, I have done all the mental preparation the warming and in the call room. At that time, I am simply focused on the first steps and since then it is Hik every step at the same time.
Each step is divided into segments, and I approach each segment as it comes. The segments are every 50 m or so, and I believe that at what point I must be pressing and at what point I must keep in place of trying to accelerate.
How did the 200 m 400m transition occur?
Growing up, I don’t think he wanted to be a 400 m sprinter. I think 400m is an event that finds you instead of the other way around. I was always a 200 -meter sprinter and made some at the same time.
The transition of 200 mA 400 m arose because we cool the 200m per decent, I ran well and arrived fourth in the European Championship. But it was only sustainable. I was receiving an outdated by making the type of training application for 200m and my body simply couldn’t stand it. So we made a decision in 2023 to move on to 400 m training.
It is a more difficult training for the 400m, but it is a little less explosive and a little less intense, so it allowed me to have a complete winter training season and any season of Vally and complete competition.
Who did you admire to grow?
My greatest inspiration growing was probably Greg Rutherford. I know it is a long sweater, but it is ginger and I am also ginger if you can’t say it.
What interests do you have more to run?
While I was at university, I studied aeronautical engineering, which is a bit different from the average study of an athlete. I chose it because my grandfather was an engineer, so I was always interested in that son of the field. I always used to take Duxford Airfield to see aerial shows and that generated my love for aeronautical engineering.
When I move away from the track, I also like to play some golf rounds, I give my mind a break of thinking about athletics all the time and it is a good place to go and hit some balls.
I collected the duration of the golf the pandemic in 2020, the colleagues of UNI and I went down and play some rounds there. Normally I try to play at least every two weeks to continue improving. My best score to date is 81 in a golf course for 72, so they are 9 along.
Do you find any similarity between playing golf and athletics?
I love it a lot because it is a completely different atmosphere to athletics where everything is fast and many things are happening at the same time. When you are in the golf course, it is quite relaxed unless you hit the water or something is quite stressful, so I try not to do that.
What shoes will you be training and competing this year?
For normal training days, I will train in the puma divert the Nitro 3 and for speed sessions or races, I will use the elites Puma Evospeed Fortro. I think they are an incredible mixture of comfort and carbon plate in them is really quite rigid, which is good and helps longer repetitions like 400m.
