Jazmin Sawyers focused on European Athletics Championships despite signing stardom

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Jazmin Sawyers is focused on her athletics career

To the sporting world, Sawyers, 21, is the European long jump silver medallist from Amsterdam last summer but there is another side to her outstanding talent.

Sawyers has been one of the stars of ITV’s Saturday night singing show The Voice, where her ‘blind’ audition saw rapper will.i.am turn around in his chair to select her for his team.

“Athletics is my first love, it is my main passion, it is what I have been working towards for years, but it is not the only thing in my life,” said Saywers on the show. “Ever since I was a kid, I have always had a great love for music.

“Being on the show is a big deal because when I walk out on to the track, I am in control and I get to decide everything that happens. But here, I don’t – and that is quite scary.”

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It means her life has a glorious mix as the domestic indoor athletics season reaches its own highest voice, with all roads leading to Belgrade.

This weekend is the British Athletics Indoor Team Trials and on Saturday week, Birmimgham hosts the Müller Indoor Grand Prix and at both Sawyers is set to face Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the 2014 world indoor long jump silver medallist, and Lorraine Ugen, the 2016 world indoor bronze medallist.

Stoke-on-Trent born Sawyers’ life is about the balancing television and the track and she said: “A lot of people have said ‘how are you going to train’? But it’s been more of a ‘we need you for two days a month’ kind of job. It’s been a lot less work than my degree was, for example, which was seven hours a day. It hasn’t been taking up much of my time.

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Jazmin Sawyers represented Team GB at Rio 2016

“I used to go to a summer school in Stoke called Starz and we used to do musicals every summer. I’ve been doing music for years but it was when I was 14 that I stopped doing theatre to focus on athletics. It’s only the last few years that I started to focus on music again.

“I did panto in Stoke. I was the main girl. That was great fun. There was interaction with the crowd which is what I enjoy in athletics so much.”

The Müller Indoor Grand Prix is the No 1 ranked indoor grand prix in the world. Tickets are available at www.britishathletics.org.uk

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