Jason Henderson

I'm head of digital at 'AW' – the world’s No.1 track and field athletics magazine. It’s been going since 1945, although I’ve not been there quite as long as that.

Growing up in England, I wanted to be ‘the next Seb Coe’. But my best 800m time of 1:54 wasn’t anywhere near good enough, so I tried to write my way to the Olympics instead.

My first Games was Sydney 2000, followed by Athens, Beijing, London and Rio. During the last 25 years I've also covered events such as the New York City Marathon, Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, Great Ethiopian Run, Himalayan 100-mile Stage Race, World Athletics Championships and World Cross Country Championships in countries as far afield as the United States, Canada, Russia and Japan, plus the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and Melbourne – to name a few.

I joined AW in 1997 and edited our weekly magazine from 2001-2020. Now, as head of digital I look after the AW website and social media as well as writing for AW's new monthly magazine.

I am secretary (and former chair) of the British Athletics Writers' Association (BAWA) and during 2021-22 I was press chief at British Athletics major events, which included two Diamond League meetings and three national championships.

Athletics is my main sport, but I've interviewed Michael Phelps, Frank Bruno, Magnus Carlsen, Mark Cavendish, covered the Tour de France and world modern pentathlon champs. Plus, in 2003 I was daft enough to do the Hawaii Ironman, which I crawled around in 16 hours and then wrote about in GQ magazine.

Other freelance writing has appeared in UK newspapers such as the Sunday Times, Observer, The Times and Guardian, while I have also written an official London 2012 book on training for athletics field events published by Carlton Books and, in 2016, Collision Course, the Olympic Tragedy of Mary Decker and Zola Budd, published by Birlinn.