Jason Gardener

Biography

Jason Gardener is one of the UK’s all time great sprinters. He achieved one of his ultimate ambitions at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games by winning Gold in the mens 4x100m relay. Earlier that year he became World Indoor Champion over 60m. He was also a four time European Indoor Champion over 60m, Commonwealth Games Champion for the 4x100m relay and is a member of the very select sub 10 second club for 100m with a personal best of 9.98 seconds.
Jason is well respected, articulate and educated and has a BSC Honours degree in Media and Sociology. He was awarded an MBE for services to athletics and has been made a Freeman of the city of Bath.

Jason is a Non Executive Director on the board of UK athletics. Jason is also working with the Olympic task force for UK athletics and he is a performance advisor for talented athletes. Jason is a UK Athletics Level 3 Performance Coach and since retiring from world class athletics he has been coaching elite athletes and sports teams.

Jason also works as an advisor for the University of Bath on major sporting events and campaigns. He has taken up a role for the Youth Sport Trust as a performance consultant working on the delivery of programmes targeted at talented young people of school age.

Jason is a performance consultant for Red Bull working in the mainstream sports department where he contributes to the development of strategies for increased brand awareness and the recruitment of ambassadors.

Jason is the vice-president of the Forever friends appeal in Bath, a charity raising money for the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

Prior to the Beijing Olympic Games, Jason was commissioned to write a series of first person columns for the Sunday Telegraph sport pages.

In 2007 Jason featured in a European Nike campaign and was signed up by faith menswear to be the face of their first ever menswear range.

Jason has appeared on many TV shows including BBC Question of Sport, Channel 5 Superstars, BBC Bobsleigh Challenge and Channel 4 McCain Track and Field show. He has conducted a series of interviews for BBC Grandstand and ITV West News. He has enjoyed success as a commentator on Eurosport and presenting n Channel 4 and Sky Sports.

In 2008 Jason took part in a project to qualify four athletes from diverse sports in the British 2 man bobsleigh championships, after just  two weeks of training he completed two runs down the course at Cesana Panoi in Italy (site of the 2006 Winter Olympics) to gain qualifications to the final. Jason was chosen to be the driver however he strategically changed the order of the team so that a stronger team would benefit from his unique and famous starts. The team succeeded in finishing in sixth place over all, as well as being the highest placed novice pair. The story was filmed for the BBC and broadcast in February 2009. Jason declined an offer to try and qualify for the Winter Olympics.

Personal Bests

Outdoor
100m – 9.98 seconds
4x100m – 37.73 European Record

Indoor
60m – 6.46 seconds
100m – 10.29 British Record