Olympics 2024: The male stars from the West Midlands and Shropshire that are going for gold
Meet the male athletes from our region looking to take the Olympics by storm:
Ben Healy
EVENT: Road cycling
HOPES: Medal hope
For Ben Healy, Paris 2024 promises to be a step into the unknown in more sense than one.
The 23-year-old from Wordsley will compete in his first Olympics for Ireland less than a fortnight after completing his first Tour de France.
Healy, who has caught the eye with his aggressive style over the past three weeks during what has been one of the most brutal and frenetic Tours in history, accepts it will be difficult to know precisely what condition he will be in when the men’s Olympic road race takes place a week on Saturday, August 3.
“I would love to go to the Olympics in great shape but it is obviously very close to the end of the Tour,” he explained earlier this year.
“That is something I just haven’t had experience with. A lot of guys have done Grand Tours and races after a Grand Tour.
“But for me it is going to be a bit of a guessing game, really. I am going to do my best to try and recover well and take some good legs to the Olympics.”
A medal for Healy would be hailed a victory for Ireland but his career is one very much built in the Black Country.
The former Summerhill School pupil grew up just a few turns of the wheel from Wordsley Glass Cone and got his first taste of cycling on Halesowen’s Manor Abbey track.
A keen mountain biker, he was on the GB development squad until the age of 16 before turning his attention to the road and his allegiances to Ireland, who were willing to offer him more opportunities to compete.
Healy, who claimed his maiden Grand Tour win at last year’s Giro d’Italia, has been among the most aggressive riders at this year’s Tour de France and claimed an impressive fifth-placed finish on stage nine, which took place on gravel roads around Troyes.
The one-day classic nature of the Olympic course should suit his attributes and he said: “It is not a course I have looked at and thought it is all for me.
“But I do think there will be an opportunity for me because I expect it to be an open and aggressive race.”
Dan Bigham
EVENT: Cycling team pursuit
HOPES: Medal chance
Having spent much of the past decade trying to help others go faster, Dan Bigham heads to Paris 2024 aiming to put his own name in lights.
The Staffordshire cycling ace is looking to put GB back on top of the podium in the men’s team pursuit, an event in which they won gold at both London 2012 and Rio 2016.
For Bigham, 32, it is a moment he would never have dreamed possible as recently as three years ago.
Always a strong cyclist, Bigham is a former national champion who briefly held the world hour record in 2022.
But for a long time in British Cycling, he was seen as something of an outsider and was better known for his expertise in engineering than racing.
Three summers ago, Bigham, from Stone, was working as an engineer for the Denmark squad which claimed silver in the team pursuit, knocking GB out of contention along the way. Throw in the fact Bigham, who now works as an aerodynamics expert for the Ineos professional team, assisted Filippo Ganna when the Italian broke his hour record and it becomes easy to see why he has previously been described as the most compromised man in track cycling.
Yet for the next few weeks, it is all about his own targets.
Called up to the GB squad two years ago, he was part of the team which won world championship gold in 2022. Their form this year has been impressive too and includes a win over Denmark at January’s European Championships.
Bigham, who now lives in Andorra, has described going to the Olympics as more of a “pipe” dream than a childhood one.
“During my time in this sport, I’ve spent a lot of time simply going about things my own way, motivated by the pure satisfaction of doing things the way I feel they should be done,” he wrote after his selection was confirmed, alongside team-mates Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter, Ethan Vernon and Ollie Wood.
Bigham continued: “There are many to thank for the time and effort they’ve put into me on this journey. I’ll make sure I give everything I have so I can thank you with the best version of me on the start line and hopefully achieve a result to match.”
Matt Hudson-Smith
EVENT: 400m
HOPES: Gold medal
Matthew Hudson-Smith wants Paris 2024 to be the culmination of a decade-long journey – as he attempts to do what no other British man has accomplished in a century.
Eric Liddell, in 1924, was the last to win gold in the 400 metres, in what was also the last time Paris hosted the Games.
Hudson-Smith will head there among the favourites after another impressive year which saw him smash his own European record when he ran 44.07 at a Diamond League meeting in Oslo less than two months ago.
The 29-year-old is now aiming to go one better than last summer when he narrowly missed out on gold at the world championships.
“That is definitely the goal for me – be the second Brit to get the Olympic gold and create my own history,” said Hudson-Smith, in a recent interview. “Last year was bittersweet. I came away with the world silver but the gold was on the table. This year, we have got a plan and it is just now sticking to it and executing it.
“It’s not about the European record, I’ve got it. It’s about the gold now. You can take away times but a medal is yours forever.
“To become an Olympic champion would mean the world to me. It would be a combination of 10 years of hard work in one moment. The time is now.”
It has been quite the journey for Hudson-Smith, who aged 19 came close to leaving the sport and joining the army.
A surprise invitation to a Diamond League meeting in Glasgow, where he ran the second fastest time in Europe that year, quickly changed those plans, getting him out of his job working on the tills at Brierley Hill Asda and on the path to becoming the continent’s fastest ever athlete over 400m.
There have been highs and serious lows along the way. Hudson-Smith qualified for the final in his first Olympics at Rio 2016 but finished last and then missed out on Tokyo 2020 altogether due to injury.
Isolated from his family living in Florida and struggling with debt, he began to struggle with his mental health. After winning bronze at the world championships in 2022, at that point the greatest performance of his career, Hudson-Smith revealed he had even attempted suicide.
“I didn’t really plan to say anything,” he admits. “I had just won a medal and I was just emotional and it literally slipped out.
“When I said it I looked at my agent because I didn’t want it to be a headline. I didn’t really want to be one of those people who used it as an excuse. But now I think it’s good to be open and honest about mental health because I think more athletes are now talking about it.
“Everyone in track and field has a story and I think it’s good that people are now saying their stories because it makes us more relatable. When we show our personality, it shows we are actually human.”
Hudson-Smith says he is now in a much better place and his results bear that out. After skipping the European Championships in order to focus on the Olympics, he won the 200m title at the recent UK Athletics Championships.
“The whole idea was to get a speed work, to try something new. It fitted in well with my training.
“I have been in a hole since Oslo, just training.
“I grew a beard and looked like I had come out of prison!
“But it is all about the bigger picture. It has been a case of get your head down, get ready to go, you are in a good position.
“Europeans and worlds is one thing but when you get to the Olympics it is a totally different pressure because it comes every four years and everyone is building for that dream.
“If you are not coming for the Olympics, why are you in the sport?
“My whole goal since 2021 has been to get ready for Paris and redeem myself for everything I have gone through.”
Charlie Carvell
EVENT: 4x400m relay
HOPES: Team medal hope
Bridgnorth athletics starlet Charlie Carvell is aiming to continue a rapid rise in the sport when he gets his first taste of an Olympic Games in Paris.
Carvell, who turned 20 last month, will be among the youngest members of the GB track and field squad after being selected for the men’s and mixed 4x400 metre relay squad.
Though he insists Paris was always a long-term target, competing at the Games will still represent a significant achievement for an athlete who only seriously took up the sport four years ago.
The Olympics will represent just Carvell’s second major international competition, after he made his bow at the European Championships earlier this summer, running an impressive anchor leg to help the men’s squad qualify for the relay final.
Prior to that, he was a standout in the junior ranks, captaining the GB team at last year’s under-20s European Championships, where he won individual silver and relay gold.
Carvell, who trains at Loughborough University, is mentored by former Olympic medallist Martyn Rooney, who also coaches the relay teams. Despite his relative inexperience, he is heading to Paris with ambitions of bringing home a medal.
“As a team we want to come home with a medal,” he explains. “That is what Martyn has given us instruction for.
“He is my mentor but also the relay head coach and I have a good relationship with him. He has guided me through being a junior and can now hopefully guide me through being an Olympian.
“Qualifying for the Olympics is credit to me, credit to my coach, credit to my team. There are so many people to credit.”
Carvell was due to compete at the London Diamond League before heading to France for preparation camp later this week.
“It is quite full-on but I am really excited for it,” he said.
Toby Robinson
