James Thie’s coaching journey

Former world 1500m finalist still likes to pull on his racing spikes when he isn’t leading training sessions, lecturing, event organising, announcing or commentating

At the peak of his track career James Thie was a world, European and Commonwealth 1500m finalist. Now a senior lecturer in sport management and performance at Cardiff Metropolitan University, as well as head coach for Coopah, he is a multiple masters world champion and coach to a successful group of athletes that includes current and alumni students from both Cardiff Met and Cardiff University.

In addition to his core training group, Thie also hosts a midweek ‘run club’ – an open track night for runners of all abilities within the local community – and is a respected event organiser, announcer and commentator.

How did you get into coaching and who did you learn from?

I was lucky to have some amazing school and club experiences through various coaches when I was developing, but I was fairly unique in that for most of my adult competitive career I was self-coached.

Mark Rowland coached me for around 18 months in 2001 and I learned a huge amount in that time. I quickly realised that there was no easy route to success, no magic wand.

I started my own coaching journey in 2008 while I was still competing [as a senior athlete]. The Scottish athlete David Bishop was looking to improve his 1500m time and he asked me if I could help him run 3:45 to get a scholarship to the US. I’d never coached anyone other than myself, but I remember thinking: “Let’s just do what I’ve been doing and tweak it”. It worked because he hit the time and got the scholarship. He was my first charge and it was nice because it went full circle – when he returned to the UK I coached him to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

I began looking after university students at Cardiff Met around the same time as working with David. I ended up coaching athletes who other people wouldn’t coach, or those who didn’t have coaches. I felt so fortunate to have those athletes because, although they didn’t realise it, I was learning through them. Every coach has to start somewhere, and by coaching someone. It’s one of those things; you only ever learn through practice, you learn through people and actually quite often you only learn through mistakes.

At the beginning I had currency as being an athlete so people were coming to me because of that. Although I’ve never stopped being an athlete, they’re now coming to me because they think of me as a coach and that’s a nice feeling.

Reputations are hard to build up, but I like to think that the proof is in the environments you create. If athletes enjoy what you’re doing, and if they’re improving or experiencing success because of it, then you’re doing something right. If you create an environment that’s not enjoyable but people are having loads of success, the moment that success starts to hit a few road bumps then groups fall apart. It’s the same the other way; if people enjoy the training environment but they’re not improving or getting success, then those groups can fall apart, too.

What’s your coaching philosophy?

I’ve always loved helping people who ask for help, and that’s at the core of my philosophy. I think it goes back to being self-coached; I want to be the coach for others that I would have wanted for myself.
Ultimately it’s about being there for my athletes, supporting them to be the best they can be while also making sure they’re healthy, happy and enjoying the sport.

Coaching student-athletes can present different challenges to those experienced by club or professional team coaches. What challenges have you faced and how have you navigated those?

It’s a fascinating one and I’d like to think I’ve mostly got it right. When athletes come to university here they often have their own coaches [at home], unlike in the US where their college coach becomes their coach. The idea of our group in Cardiff is that anyone can jump into sessions, but there’s not an assumption that I’ll coach an athlete just because they’ve moved here.

Piers Copeland [2019 European U23 silver medallist] is a good example. At the time [he came to Cardiff Met] I was coaching Jake Heyward [2022 European silver medallist and Welsh 1500m record-holder] and people assumed Piers would come to me, but he was happy with his “home” coach Bob Smith who is brilliant, so he would just jump in every few sessions with us. That’s a win-win because he had his own set-up that was working really well, but he felt like he could be part of our team and could join in on training sessions with us, too.

It’s a bit of a rotating door with university students. You don’t own any athletes. Athletes might come to Cardiff Met or Cardiff Uni then go off to do a Masters in the US. When they come back I might end up picking them back up, or they end up going somewhere else, but if they’re still running, still progressing and still enjoying it – and if I’ve been part of that – then that’s great.

Another challenge for student-athletes is moving away from home and the transition to living alone. As a university coach it’s one of the hidden issues we have to deal with. With coach education we talk about programming, planning, all of that, but pastoral care is crucial and goes back to my philosophy of caring for athletes and looking out for them.

We’re lucky to have a great group in Cardiff and I like to think that new students feel part of something straight away. I keep them on the grass for as long as possible and we try to avoid the track in the first few months because it’s a bit too prescribed. I just want to keep athletes healthy and happy in that first block because there’s nothing worse than picking up an injury in the first two to three weeks of university.

We go down to Merthyr Mawr sand dunes near Bridgend [made famous by Steve Ovett] almost religiously every October, a few weeks after the students start university. After the session the athletes mess around in the sea. I remember years ago one of the students said to me: “This is the best thing I’ve done since I started university”. She still runs now and that sticks with me. It’s the change of environment, you’re out of Cardiff running barefoot on the sand. I used to love going down there myself and it really made me think about the impact of that experience, especially for new students.

It can be hard as a coach because you want to maximise a runner’s potential. I could throw 100 miles a week at all my athletes, but only a few would succeed. I think I’m sometimes guilty of under-cooking people but that often leads to them having a longer career in the sport and they enjoy it more. It’s about making sure that they’ve always got somewhere to go, that there’s always room for progression.

What, if anything, has changed in coaching since you first got involved?

The fundamentals haven’t changed, but I’m constantly learning. The Norwegian double-threshold, the effect of super shoes. You have to evolve, you have to change, or otherwise you’re done for as a coach.

What’s the best piece of advice you would pass on to new or aspiring coaches?

Coaches, or people who want to coach, need to get out and get coaching experience. There are so many different groups out there that need volunteer coaches and they don’t survive without them. People have this unrealistic expectation that you’re going to walk straight into a paid job or a paid coaching role, but there are so few paid opportunities out there.

I look back at the time when I was coaching students as an “unknown” coach and there was no pressure, no expectations. I actually remember in 2010, two years after I’d started coaching, I suddenly had this massive group and I said to my wife: “I never planned for this to happen.”

It was never my goal to have such a big group or the driving force for my coaching, but the group just grew organically. The athletes were the voice of the group and they became the recruiters, rather than me.

It’s also important to have a good support network around you – friends, partners etc, and to use mentors. Coaching is time-consuming, so those closest to you need to understand how challenging it can be.

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your coaching career?

It’s a rollercoaster of emotions but the highs are unbelievable and they keep you going through some of the lower moments in sport. Ultimately you need to enjoy it and you need to stay authentic to yourself.

Don’t ever put success as the absolute driver. If you create the right environment and you enjoy what you do then success will come from that, but it should not be to the detriment of the athletes, their health, your health or your family’s health. You want it to be long-term so you need to have a balance to make it sustainable.

Finally, even though coaching can be all-consuming, there’s always time to train! I still run [and compete] because I love the sport and I think that’s a good example to set to my children and the athletes I coach.

I feel really fortunate that athletics has given, and continues to give, my children a positive experience, even unknowingly. My daughter Bella now comes to our open track night every Wednesday with a couple of her friends. I basically just blow a whistle and they run, but there’s a nice collective of people – up-and coming young athletes, parents and their kids – and it’s just a nice way of giving something back to the community. For me, it’s also time with Bella and that means a lot.

» This article first appeared in the November issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here

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