Charlie Dobson steps up a gear

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British 400m champion on switching focus and raising his own levels of ambition

By early September, Charlie Dobson had run 10 individual races during the year, all over the same distance of 400m. It had been a season like no other – not just because it yielded an Olympic relay bronze, European individual silver and first British title, but that all of those accolades had come over the quarter-mile.

For most of Dobson’s career he had considered himself to be primarily a 200m runner. So, at the end of his first year focusing entirely on double that distance, he thought he might test himself back over the shorter sprint to see if a series of 400m personal bests would translate when dropping down.

Dobson, 25, pencilled himself in for a low-key, season-ending 200m race but, before committing, his manager messaged the organisers of the Diamond League final in Brussels to double-check that he was not needed.

Dobson had competed in three Diamond League races during the summer, earning sufficient points to place him 10th in the standings. With the Belgian hosts permitted to add a home nation athlete, it meant he required three athletes to drop out if he was to be given a spot in the eight-lane final. Unlikely, but worth posing the question.

The answer that came back was unexpectedly positive, but with plans altered in favour of a trip to Belgium there was another hurdle to overcome. When the start list was unveiled the day before the race, Dobson had been allocated the unappetising, tight, inside lane one, while the significantly slower home addition of Jonathan Sacoor was in lane seven.

Negotiations took place, the two men were belatedly switched a couple of hours before the meet and Dobson was able to produce the most dramatic of late charges, surging home from seventh place when entering the finishing straight to claim the unlikeliest of Diamond League titles. It was the “biggest shock of the night”, according to stunned commentator Tim Hutchings.

“It was a shock to me, 100 per cent,” says Dobson. “You go into every race with full confidence in yourself, but you have to set yourself realistic goals.

“I’d originally thought I’d be happy if I came in the top five. Getting to 250m I’d run my own race and people weren’t as far ahead of me as in previous races. I came off the bend and saw they were only five or 10 metres ahead so I thought I’d be able to chase them down. I gave it every single bit of energy I had and surprised myself. The lane change made the world of difference.”

It was a performance that should have significant repercussions for a career that has flickered frequently with glimpses of Dobson’s talent over a remarkable range of distances. Only last year, he won a World Indoor Tour 60m race in Birmingham, while he earned world under-20 silver over 200m and finished fourth over that same distance at the 2022 European Championships.

In the five 400m races he had run prior to this year, he had never gone slower than 56 seconds. It was this ability that led Iwan Thomas to tell AW two years ago that his 400m British record of 44.36 was Dobson’s “if he wants it”.

At that point, Dobson still considered himself a 200m runner, now admitting: “I never thought I’d 100 per cent move up to the 400m.” A series of injuries meant a change to that mindset, with 200m training “not working consistently enough for me to carry on enjoying the sport”.

When his former coach Benke Blomkvist returned to his native Sweden, Dobson sought out the services of Leon Baptiste last autumn, and decided to channel his entire energy into the 400m. “I just wanted to finally enjoy a full season of athletics again,” he explains.

The outcome was a first injury-free year, which Dobson ascribes to a combination of changing coach, altering the intensity of his training for the longer distance and finishing university: “I can come back from training and just chill and recover properly rather than having to sit at a desk.”

The European silver from June came in a personal best 44.38, which he then improved a few weeks later when clocking 44.23 at the London Diamond League. That performance proved Thomas correct, but did not legislate for the outstanding times produced by Matt Hudson-Smith, who went below 44 seconds on three occasions in 2024, including the run that took him to Olympic silver.

“It’s great fun, but at the same time really annoying,” says a smiling Dobson, when asked about having Hudson-Smith as a compatriot. “Personally, I’d have liked to have a crack at the British record. Now Matt has lowered it by almost a second, which is incredible but frustrating.

“But it’s amazing to have him as a British athlete and incredibly inspiring. He’s a great guy and is fully invested in the relay squad, which means a lot to all the boys.”

The men’s 4x400m Olympic bronze was one of five relay medals won by the British team at the Paris Olympics, including bronzes in the women’s and mixed 4x400m. That, says Dobson, is in no small part down to Hudson-Smith.

“We’ve got such a strong squad now,” he says. “We’ve medalled at every major championship since Europeans in 2022, and long may it continue.

“British men’s 400m running did go through a bit of a lull and a lot of people had written it off, but Matt having his incredible comeback and winning a medal in Eugene [2022 World Championships] spearheaded the resurgence of British 400m running. It certainly inspired me to pick up the 400m and dedicate more time to the relay, and I’m sure it did with others.

“We’re starting to develop some really good depth, so we have the ability to swap out people as and when we need, and still be incredibly strong. That was proven at the Olympics.”

» This is an abridged version of a feature that appears 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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