Exclusive: "The great thing about getting Eleanor Patterson to the world title was I also achieved a personal goal" - Alex Stewart
Alex Stewart is one of the world’s best high jump coaches. He is presently the High-Performance coach and National Event Lead in the High Jump event for Athletics Australia.
Stewart has guided high jump athlete Eleanor Patterson to a gold medal at the 2022 World Championships, a silver medal at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, a 2022 World Indoor Championships silver medal in Belgrade, and a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Additionally, Stewart has coached Brandon Starc to two Commonwealth Games medals — a gold in 2018 and a silver in the 2022 edition.
Sportskeeda got an opportunity to have a chat with Alex Stewart regarding various track and field-related topics and his coaching career. Here is the transcript from the exclusive interview:
Q: What inspired you to become a coach? Can you share any experiences or conversations with Vasily Grishchenkov that influenced your decision? Were there any other factors/ people involved in your decision-making?
Alex Stewart: “He was always very encouraging and honest with me. One of the reasons that he felt as though I could be a good coach was because I didn't really make the level that I wanted to make as an athlete. He felt that my motivation to coach and perhaps, coach people to that level that I wanted to reach as an athlete might be quite high as a lot of good coaches don't necessarily achieve very high levels as an athlete.”
“I had a number of great mentors. Probably one worth mentioning is a man called Alex Caan, who was at that time the British national high jump coach. He was always very open with me, was very willing to share knowledge, and also very encouraging. Another fantastic coach from Brazil, Nelio Moura, is the only coach in history to coach the male and female Olympic champions in the same event at the same Olympic Games, which was the long jump in 2008.”
“If I had a problem, they (Vasily and Alex) were always willing to make time to talk to me about whatever that problem was and try to offer a solution. So, whenever I get approached by people starting out in coaching now, I always try to make as much time as I can for them because that was done for me back when I started to coach. So, it really wouldn't be correct if I didn't provide those people with the same opportunities that I was afforded.”
Q: As the coach of athletes like Eleanor Patterson and Brandon Starc, medalists at prestigious international competitions, what emotions do you experience knowing that you have played a part in their success on the world stage?
Alex Stewart: “Yeah, well, you experience a lot of emotions. If we talk about those two individuals, my journey with each of them has been quite different. I've coached Brandon since he was 15 years old and now he's 30 years old. So, I have seen him grow from a young boy into a fully grown man married with a child. We have really been on a life journey together. So, in many ways, when he achieves, I feel proud like every coach feels proud, but I probably feel a little bit of proudness in the same way that a father feels proud of their son when they achieve.”
“A career-defining moment for him was winning the 2018 Commonwealth Games, it really just was a moment of real satisfaction because for a long time, I knew of his potential. That was the time he really delivered and it indicated his arrival on the world stage. So, I just felt satisfied as I was able to get him where he should be.”
“Eleanor is a different story, again. I have only coached her since 2019. So, the time we've had together hasn't been as long, but I feel that we probably have quite a strong attachment to one another as coach and athlete. There was that element of satisfaction with getting her to where she should be. What she has achieved in her career is not even just scratching the surface of what she should have achieved by this point in her career already.”
Q: How do you help your athletes maintain their mental composure and peak performance in high-pressure events?
Alex Stewart: “There's nothing like an athlete that turns up for a World Championship or an Olympic games knowing that they are ready. So if I can get them to the start line, knowing that they've done the work and are in good form, there's a very good chance that their mental state is going to be positive or in a good place.”
“Another thing is an approach I tried to take to the majority of competitions, but especially the major competitions is to keep the interaction or the feedback that occurs between us quite minimal. So, the conversation that goes on at the fence during the competition might be a very short positive statement followed by maybe a very brief technical cue and that'll be a technical cue that they're very familiar with something that we've worked on all the time. When we're training, at all times I just try to have open and honest communication with them.”
Q: At the World Athletics Championships 2022, Eleanor Patterson made history by winning the gold medal. Can you describe the emotions that both you and Eleanor experienced during that moment after this achievement?
“The great thing about getting her (Eleanor) to the world title was I also achieved a personal goal in that, like part of the reason I coach is to try and coach people to be the best and to win the world titles. That moment of her winning, it was almost surreal. I remember walking out the back of the stand and I called my wife and she was at work and was watching live coverage of it on the internet at work. I didn't know what to say to her. I just cried. I couldn't speak. It just got to the point where she just had to say, just call me back when you're done with the crying and then, we can actually talk and celebrate. Pretty emotional for both of us.”
“I think for her, it really was, it was, it was a very career-defining moment. It's a lifetime of working, dreaming, sleepless nights. Going to bed and thinking about being a world champion. If you think about it, how many young athletes go through those processes, and very few of them actually get to achieve it?"
"Actually, the months after that championship were probably quite a difficult time for her. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it imposter syndrome, but she definitely had a sense of feeling like she needed to prove to everybody that she was a world champion. That was probably the most complex, emotional feeling that was attached to winning that world title.”
Q: How did you like the atmosphere at Hayward Field where Eleanor won the world title?
Alex Stewart: “Hayward Field is an exceptional venue. I have traveled to a lot of places on the planet and I've been to a lot of tracks and I've never seen anything like it. It's quite unique in the way that it's laid out and the way it presents track and field. Eugene is known as TrackTown USA."
"So, there's so much history attached to that venue and so many people within the town or so many people that travel there have a real knowledge and respect and appreciation for the sport. So, you pretty much knew that everybody who was sitting in the stand were really hardcore fans of the sport.”
“A lot of the time you hear about the way that athletics is packaged as a sport and that field events are boring and track events are the main highlight. Everybody in the crowd was invested in every, every event that was happening. I even remember during the course of the funnel that there were people, they were just fans who were high-fiving me and fist-bumping in between attempts. So that really presented a cool part of the competition in that as the coaches, we were literally in the stands with the fans, which for them is, I would imagine, a very cool experience as well. So yeah, I loved it. It was fantastic.”
Q: What are your thoughts on athletes, like JuVaughn Harrison, competing in two events - both the high jump and long jump? What challenges do the athletes usually face and the qualities essential for both disciplines?
Alex Stewart: “Well, I mean, JuVaughn Harrison is an absolutely phenomenal athlete. I genuinely think that he actually could excel in any sport you put him in. He has like a very unique body makeup for a human. Just some phenomenal physical characteristics. The interesting thing about competing in multiple jump events is that each of them has different pack-offs.”
“So, with the differences in the take-offs between the long jump and triple jump and high jump, even if you look at the long jump and triple jump, which are much more similar than the long jump and high jump, often that presents too great a challenge for athletes to be able to differentiate between the two. But, I think, in a case that an athlete can differentiate between the two and can perform the different take-offs successfully and have the physical capacity to do both events, then why not?”
Q: Now that you have achieved your goal of seeing your athletes win medals at top international events, do you have new coaching goals?
Alex Stewart: “Well, so I talked to you earlier about Nelio Moura, who had coached the male and female Olympic champions who won gold in the same event at the same Olympics (Maurren Higa Maggi and Irving Saladino in Beijing 2008). That's my aim for Paris. My big aim in Paris is to coach the winners of the men's and women's Olympic high jump. I've had that long, essentially since knowing him, of wanting to be able to achieve that. I think that this may be the best opportunity that I will have to do that.”