Jackson: Why I won't tune in to Edmonton

When the World Championships got under way in Edmonton on Friday night, Britain's only reigning world champion was half a world away. "I was round at a friend's house in Cambridge," Colin Jackson said.

The Welshman, who won the 110m hurdles in Seville two years ago, did not even bother asking for the television set to be turned on. But surely he will be watching when his title is on the line at 4.15am on Friday? "Will I hell," Jackson said, laughing heartily. "Absolutely no chance at all. I'll be tucked up in bed. I'll wait till I wake up in the morning to find out who's won it."

So does Britain's most bemedalled major championship competitor plan to watch any of the action from the Commonwealth Stadium? "Erm..." he said, "I won't be making an effort to."

Colin Jackson makes no apology for switching off this summer. For 16 years – ever since he took the European junior silver medal in Cottbus behind his first great rival and fellow Briton Jon Ridgeon – the Peter Pan of sprint hurdling has been tuned in to the unforgiving pressure of international championship competition. Until this year, that is.

At the age of 34, Jackson has been racing with the world's best on the European circuit this summer – but never with any intention of defending his global crown in Edmonton. "I'm pretty pleased that I've been able to switch off and not have the pressure," he said. "It has made a lot of difference to my general approach to athletics. I have got the enthusiasm back. There has been no stress or strain to get ready for a championships. I wouldn't say that I have missed that.

"It has been such a long period of time. Since I have been 18 I have had the pressure of doing championships, sometimes two or three in a season. It's the mental stress and strain that gets to you. Not many people in their careers have deadlines to meet in the same way. Friends of mine in the industry I want to go into eventually – film producers – compare their job to what I do and say, 'Well, really, our job is much easier. You have only one chance. You can't re-run the race. It's not like a scene you do that might be rubbish. You can't re-shoot it.' It's that kind of pressure we're under."

It is pressure upon which Jackson has thrived in four of the five World Championships that he has contested. Back in 1987, as a 20-year-old novice in the senior ranks, he rose to the big occasion with a brilliant bronze-medal performance behind the American Greg Foster and the equally inspired young Ridgeon in Rome. In Tokyo four years later Jackson withdrew injured after winning his heat but in Stuttgart in 1993 Jackson savoured his finest hour – well, his finest 12.91sec, actually.

In a blinding flash of near-perfect sprint hurdling, he set the world record that still stands today. He also set the record straight for those – including his American friend and rival Tony Dees – who questioned whether he possessed the bottle to win a global title after blowing his big chance at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

The silver Jackson took behind Allen Johnson in Athens in 1997 was another personal vindication, after he had been written off again after finishing fourth in the Olympic final in Atlanta the previous year. Then, in Seville in 1999, came confirmation of Jackson's enduring class. At 32, Jackson struck gold again – the first British athlete to regain a World Championship title, a feat Jonathan Edwards stands to follow in Edmonton.

Unlike Edwards, however, Jackson has no Olympic gold in his glittering medal collection – only a silver lining from Seoul in 1988. Sydney was always going to be his last chance, and even before he finished fifth in the final there Jackson was telling the world that the 2000 Olympics would be his major championship swansong. He would be running – hurdling – strictly for fun in future.

Now, though, Jackson happens to be having so much fun he is entertaining the prospect of challenging for a fourth successive European title in Munich next August – and of being in the British team for the European indoor championships in Vienna in February. "I've spoken to the federation, to the people at UK Athletics, about it," Jackson revealed.

"I've told them, 'OK, if things are going well next summer, I'd like to jump in and do the Europeans.' The same with the European indoors in the winter, depending on how the training goes. They've mentioned the Commonwealth Games to me, too, but that's definitely out.

"I'm enjoying my athletics a lot again. It's whether you want to turn that pressure back on for a championship, and, yes, I would like to do the Europeans – if I'm healthy. If you look at our event, there's nothing really happening in the 110m hurdles at the moment. The fastest time in the world this year is only 13.15sec, which is not an incredible performance at all.

"It's quite funny. I've been thinking if I could have prepared properly in the winter I'd be easily running those kind of performances virtually every day of the week. I wonder if that would have made me change my mind about the World Championships."

The chances are it would have. Jackson only resumed training on 19 May after four months out of action with an Achilles tendon problem. He has also lost four weeks of summer training to injury. And yet still he has been in world-class form – clocking 13.32sec and winning in Rome, Dortmund and Kassel.

By Friday morning Jackson will no longer be king of the World Championship castle, but he will be hungry to prove his regal hurdling pedigree. While Allen Johnson, Anier Garcia and Co are in Edmonton preparing to challenge for the undefended title, Jackson has been on the training track in Bath getting ready to challenge the American, the Cuban and the rest of his global rivals on the post-World Championship circuit.

"It's going to be a good opportunity for me to put some good performances together," Jackson said. "I'll be running in the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich the Friday after the championships and the Norwich Union Classic at Gateshead two days later, on 19 August. Then I've got Brussels, Berlin, the Goodwill Games, the Grand Prix final and Yokohama. It'll be interesting to see what I can do."

It will indeed. And it will be more than interesting to see what Colin Jackson can do when he returns to championship competition next year – with a full winter's training and a summer of pressure-free hurdling behind him.