I want to be the David Beckham of athletics: Mason

Aug 30 2008 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

GERMAINE Mason left for the Olympics this month hoping the British public would take to the outsider with the Jamaican twang and returned home to a letter from Gordon Brown.

Invigorated by his silver medal the high jumper wants to match the popularity of his friend Usain Bolt and become “the David Beckham of athletics”.

The 25-year-old could have been part of Jamaica’s successful Olympic track and field team, instead he was a rare and surprise British success and already it has changed his life.

“It’s been overwhelming,” he says of the public reaction this week. “When I walk down the street, people I don’t know are coming up to me to tell me ‘well done’. Being from Jamaica I didn’t think people would recognise me like that. I think I must have done a great job for them to know who I am.”

The man from Kingston was a two-time World Junior champion for the land of his birth but a serious injury at the 2004 World Indoor Championships caused a rethink which saw him take advantage of his British-born father to switch sides in 2006.

“I was worried the British people might not accept me,” he admits. “I wondered if they might think I was coming to steal their athletes’ glory. I’ve always been half-British and feel extremely proud to be representing this country.

“The athletes have been very supportive, and UK Athletics have helped me a lot as well. Now I don’t even feel like I’m a Jamaican and that’s not really something I thought I’d be saying a few years ago.

“The last week has been amazing, it’s given me a bit of an insight into what the Olympics are going to be like in 2012,” he says. “I shook the Prime Minister’s hand coming off the plane, and he wrote me a letter telling me he was happy I came over here. I really appreciated that.”

Bolt and Mason were team-mates in 2000 before Bolt smashed 100m and 200m world records in Beijing. Now Mason wants a share of the limelight.

“Hopefully I can be like David Beckham one day,” he smiles. “I saw the attention he got in Beijing, and I’d like to think something like that might happen to me one day. When the Olympics comes around, people see athletics in a different light.”