From electrician to gold medallist

Angelo Taylor caused a major upset when he regained the Olympic 400m hurdles title he first won eight years ago. The double Olympic champ tells spikesmag.com that he fell so low after winning his first gold medal, he was forced to work as an electrician to make ends meet...

For most athletes, winning an Olympic track and field gold medal would represent the gateway to untold riches and a secure future. But while that would ring true for many countries in the world this is most certainly not the case in the USA where track and field gold medallists are ten a penny.
But don’t ask us, just ask Angelo Taylor, the two-time Olympic 400m hurdles champion.
Back in 2000 Taylor, then aged just 21, was earmarked as a worldwide star after winning the gold medal from lane one at the Sydney Games.
Yet financial security did not follow his Sydney success, as the Georgia native's career was battered by a succession of injuries, including hip flex, back and stress fractures.
He mounted a brave defence of his title in Athens but his Olympic quest ended at the semi-final stage as he finished the race in “excruciating pain”.
In 2005 he took a one-year break from the sport but worse was to follow. His sponsorship deal with Nike was terminated and he underwent an unfortunate and very public court case which hit the US hurdler hard. Taylor, who had young twins Xzaviah and Isaiah to support, was forced into a humbling decision, and took up a full-time position as an apprentice electrician to make ends meet.
“I still wanted to compete but I needed to find something (money) to support my family,” he explains in his slow Southern drawl. “I didn’t always want to be an electrician, it was just a job that allowed me to work and train.”
So what happened to the millions of dollars which followed your Sydney success?
“Oh no,” he says, emphasising the 'oh no'. “We don’t get no millions. Being a champion in the US is much different. We have so many champions you are only as good as your last race.”
Taylor started his shift each day at 6am and he finished at 2.30pm, which allowed him to take to the track at 3.30pm for training.
The modest salary just about covered the bills and although he found the skills he learned useful he said the experience made him even more determined to return to the top as an international athlete.
“I didn’t enjoy getting up that early,” explains Taylor. “One month we were working on a new construction building and it didn’t have windows. It was a 14-storey building it was freezing at 6am in the morning. I thought, I can’t do this anymore!" 
He didn’t have to wait much longer.
In June last year the hard work under his new coach Innocent Egbunike, the former African record holder for 400m, started to pay dividends.
Preferring to run the 400m flat last season, he ran a stunning new personal best of 44.05 to take the US title. After that day he never went back to his day job – he was once again a full-time athlete, but now with a more mature, rounded approach.
“When I was young in Sydney I never got massage and I never took ice baths I just never thought I needed to, but as I got older I realised I didn’t recover as quick I used to,” he confesses. “I was talking to my coach, and my friends and I thought maybe I needed to do this." 
The results were immediate. Now supported by a regular masseur he enjoyed an injury-free season and landed a 4x400m gold medal at the World Championships in Osaka and a bronze medal in the individual 400m.