Athletics: Determination runs through the veins as Jones plots path

British by name Andres Jones might be, but there's a lot more to the tale than meets the eye

Last year Andres Jones came from nowhere, it seemed, to run in the 10,000m at the Olympic Games. It was his first senior international appearance. This afternoon he wins his second British vest, at the European cross-country championships in Thun, Switzerland. The young Welshman seems to have emerged from nowhere again. In actual fact, he has come from the burning wreckage of a Peugeot 405.

Jones had only been back from Sydney three weeks when his girlfriend's car was struck by a Land Rover at a crossroads in Mydroilyn, four miles from his home in Aberaeron. "It was a nasty crash," he recalled. "The Land Rover hit the driver's side and the car was all crushed in over my girlfriend's legs. Fortunately, I managed to drag her out before it went up in flames.

"Jennifer, my girlfriend at the time (we're not together any more but we're still good friends), was badly hurt. She had a broken collarbone, a fractured pelvis and a broken jaw. She was in the middle of her final year of A-levels and she had to learn to write from scratch with her left arm. She must have gone through hell, but she got her three A-levels and she's doing absolutely great at university.

"I get my strength from people like her and my grandfather ­ people I know ­ rather than from people I read about, other athletes past and present." And Jones is clearly a character of considerable strength, having recovered from the shock of that smash, plus an Achilles tendon injury, a stress fracture and 10 months of inactivity, to make it back to international level. His grandfather would have been proud of him, had Horacio Diaz not died of a brain tumour after his days as a champion boxer in Colombia. "My grandfather fought in America and was a very respected sportsman in Colombia," Jones said. "He built up his own crane company, too. He was an orphan."

Andres Jones is not your average British distance runner, as his name might well suggest. His father, Hugh, met his mother, Alicia, while teaching English in Cali on a tour of South America. "He likes to tell people he bought my mother on the internet from the Philippines," Andres said. "She was actually one of his pupils, though there was no great age difference, thank God." The Joneses settled in Aberaeron, a fishing village in Cardigan Bay, where Hugh works for the local council and Alicia works for the Red Cross ­ and where Andres, their 24-year-old son, has emerged as a 10,000m runner of world-class potential.

His talent was first spotted by a local police constable, Kevin Evans, who coached him to junior international level. Last year, having started commuting to Cardiff once a week to train under the guidance of Paul Darney, Jones improved his best 10,000m time by 1min 17sec, winning the AAA title in 28min 00.50sec, the fourth-fastest clocking for the distance by a Welshman (behind Steve Jones, Tony Simmons and Ian Hamer). He also won the AAA 5,000m title, becoming the first athlete to achieve the distance-running double since Dave Bedford in 1972. And he made his debut for Britain at the Olympics in Sydney, finishing ninth in the opening 10,000m heat, won by Haile Gebrselassie.

His target this afternoon, on his international cross-country debut, ought to be something modestly befitting an athlete still some way short of peak racing fitness on the comeback trail. Being the exception that he is, though, Jones does not rule out the possibility of "having a cracking run". He does not like to place constraints on his personal horizon.

"People can achieve much more than they actually think," he said. "That's why I never judge myself in reference to other athletes ­ like when people compare what I've done to what someone else has achieved in the past. I think that makes you weaker. What makes you strong are your own life experiences ­ what you've gone through in your life, not what other people have done. You have to be yourself."

And Jones is certainly his own man, training to take on the rest of the running world as a solo full-time athlete in Aberaeron. "Yeah, I am completely out on a limb here," he said. "I go down to Cardiff to train on the track once a week, but I know what I have to do in training to get the best out of myself and here in Aberaeron I've got the environment that suits me. I quite welcome the gale-force winds and the pouring rain. I quite like fighting Mother Nature at times. It all helps to make me stronger mentally."

Aberaeron's lone long-distance runner is a strong brew indeed ­ half Welsh, half Colombian, but content to have sole nationality with his British passport and his Great Britain vest. "If I was Colombian and I did become famous, I think I'd be scared of being held to ransom," he mused.