The serving to hand of Barrie Wells

We communicate to a person who has used his wealth to help a variety of Britain’s best athletes on the trail to success

Round 4 years in the past, Barrie Wells thought his days of funding athletes had been over. Since 2008 the millionaire benefactor had given a complete of roughly £2 million to Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Jess Ennis-Hill and fellow Brits to spice up their medal probabilities at main championships.

Because the pandemic unfolded, he centered his efforts on his Box4Kids scheme as an alternative, but issues modified when he obtained a telephone name from Jenny Meadows, one of many athletes he used to assist.

“I had just about stopped funding particular person athletes until somebody unbelievable got here out the woodwork,” Wells remembers. “However Jenny and her husband Trevor advised me a few younger athlete referred to as Keely and the sort of instances she was working.

“I checked out what she was doing and I believed ‘that is somebody distinctive’. I discovered she had a good cross-country background but in addition this base pace. I didn’t wish to return to funding athletes, however Keely appeared fairly particular.”

Wells made his fortune creating and promoting companies and, as an enormous athletics fanatic and former athlete himself, he has been on a mission for the previous 16 years serving to British athletes with funding.

In March 2020, simply days earlier than the primary Covid lockdown within the UK, I visited Wells in his workplaces in Lancaster and in a subsequent function dubbed him “probably the most beneficiant man in British athletics”. Now, with the Paris Olympics in full swing, I tracked him down on the Stade de France a few days after Hodgkinson struck Olympic gold to ask him about how he got here to assist the 800m star.

“We checked out her social media and background,” he recollects, “and he or she was this well-behaved lady who was centered on being an athlete. I actually obtained on along with her and I favored her mum and pop as properly. So I got here on board and requested what I might do.”

Wells doesn’t simply throw cash at athletes. “I must know their plan,” he says.

With Ennis-Hill it was assist with physiotherapy and entry to further javelin teaching from Mick Hill. For Hodgkinson, she wanted to get away for warm-weather coaching through the pandemic along with serving to get Painter to the holding camp forward of the Tokyo Video games.

Quickly, the funding paid off as she received Olympic silver in Tokyo. “Since then I don’t actually need to assist her,” says Wells, “as she earns sufficient cash herself.”

Hodgkinson has not been a whole one-off, both. Wells has helped Molly Caudery in current months, though the British pole vault record-holder had a nightmare in Paris as she did not make the ultimate.

Like Hodgkinson, Wells made an exception for Caudery, however on this event as a result of he has a delicate spot for her occasion. His grandfather was Ernest Latimer Stones, a world record-holder for the pole vault within the Eighteen Eighties, so when he ran into Caudery’s coach Scott Simpson sooner or later in a resort elevate, he agreed to assist with a few of her international journey in her quest to turn out to be the world’s No.1 pole vaulter.

Amusingly, although, Wells feels Caudery is commonly too embarrassed to ask him to pay for flight upgrades in order that she will be able to stretch her legs on long-haul journeys due to the sheer value!

A rising star, Caudery will hope for extra success on the World Championships in Tokyo subsequent yr. Wells did nevertheless nonetheless have loads to cheer in Paris, as his self-confessed favorite athlete, Johnson-Thompson, received her first Olympic medal with heptathlon silver.

His favouritism is as a result of he first met KJT again in 2008 when she was simply 15 and he started offering her with funding to assist along with her coaching. Since then, the 2 have turn out to be shut mates and Johnson-Thompson has been Patron of the Barrie Wells Belief since 2012.⁠

In recognition for all the assistance he has given her, the heptathlon star has paid the millionaire again in spades by changing into a daily host at his Box4Kids occasions.

Such is the scale of the scheme, one current weekend noticed 24 Box4Kids occasions held across the nation and it has given good experiences to round 20,000 significantly or terminally ailing youngsters at occasions starting from the London Diamond League to soccer matches at Anfield – the house of Wells’ and KJT’s beloved Liverpool FC.

Wells enjoys seeing his athletes recognising the assist that he initially gave them. He appreciated, for instance, that Hodgkinson stopping throughout her lap of honour on the Stade de France to offer him a hug within the stands, whereas her mum, Rachel, hosts Box4Kids occasions at Previous Trafford, a no-go space for a die-hard Liverpool fan after all.

“Some athletes see it as a ‘transactional relationship’,” says Wells, “which is a bit unhappy to see. When their funding involves an finish, I don’t hear from them once more. However with others, they continue to be in contact.

“An incredible instance is Dai Greene. He was fourth within the hurdles and relay at London 2012 and his funding got here to an finish however he nonetheless devotes about 4 weekends a yr to internet hosting Box4Kids, which is very nice.”

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