Athlete juggles track time with mentoring latest crop of South London talent

By Stefan Frost

When he isn’t breaking world records, Mensah Elliott spends his time mentoring the latest crop of promising South London athletes.

He became the UK Inter Area Masters Champion in the 60m hurdles recently, equalling his personal best of 7.91 seconds in the 45 to 49 age category.

He shattered the previous world record of 8.15 seconds, just weeks after setting a championship record at the European Masters Athletics Indoor Championships in Portugal.

“I woke up on the Sunday and thought I’ll just go and get a point for the county and the rest is history really,” said Mensah.

“The time I ran equalled my personal best which I got in 2001. They say when you get older you start slowing down, but I’m not sure about that.”

After reaching such impressive heights, Mensah has returned to his day job as a police officer and runs athletics sessions in Lewisham outside of working hours.

He has been the head coach at S-Factor Athletics Academy, which is based at Ladywell Arena, for five years now, where he delivers specialist advice.

“If I didn’t have the knowledge when coaching them, we’d have lost a lot of them by now,” he said.

“When I first arrived I saw kids just running about. Now I’ve got them doing a structured warm-up and have explained to them why we do mobile stretching instead of static stretching.”

Warm-ups prevent injury and Elliott understands the value of them more than most. He first competed for Great Britain aged 19, but left the sport as a result of injuries sustained after the Commonwealth Games in 2002.

He picked up golf as a recreational hobby but it didn’t fill the void, and so a few years later he returned to the track to compete in Masters Athletics, which are competitions for over 35s from across the world.

“I still had a passion for hurdling and I thought I’d get back into it so that my daughter, who was born in 2008, could see me race.”

Mensah’s daughter is in secondary school now and has taken a keen interest in athletics but she is not the only one to be influenced by her father.

Last weekend 11 young S-Factor athletes ran in the 60 metre sprints at Sutcliff Park and four of them got personal best times.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing though for Mensah – he’s been confronted with a few barriers when trying to win at the Masters level.

Anyone aged 35 or above, irrespective of ability, can enter a Masters event and so the aptitude of each competitor varies considerably.

Most countries hesitate to fund Masters athletes because of this, but Mensah thinks governing bodies should at least consider supporting their contenders and medal winners.

“I call this an expensive hobby. Other countries like the US fund medal winners but the UK doesn’t,” he said. “There has to be a way of keeping people in the sport. Most of the Masters athletes I know do coaching as well. I don’t know the answers but funding is something which enables people to go to a competition.”

Currently S-Factor has a junior group for seven to 11-year-olds, and a senior group for 11 to 18-year-olds.

Mensah said: “I can’t step away from coaching now. I see the trust the kids have in me and I think if I stop, I feel like I’d be letting them down. I want to help them realise that it’s them, not me, that can achieve big.”

Pictured top: Mensah Elliott with some of the youngsters