Caitlin Sargent-Jones reflects on her life around the UQ Sport track and coach Eric Brown

Veteran Australian sprinter Caitlin Sargent-Jones has reflected on her life around the UQ Sport track and long association with coach Eric Brown.

Caitlin Sargent-Jones sits in the small grandstand overlooking the athletics track at UQ Sport and peers out over the grounds like they were her own backyard. And they almost are.

After all, the Australian sprinter has been coming to the oval, sometimes daily, for around 16 years.

“It has not changed a whole lot,’’ she said.

“I love it to train at. This is like home for me.

“I have been coming out here since I was 10 and I am now 26 now, so it has been a long time.’’

Annelise Rubie, Caitlin Sargent and Morgan Mitchell celebrate. Picture. Phil Hillyard

And part of the landscape is her coach, Eric Brown, always wearing a white cap.

Jones once thought he was a “crazy old man’’.

“I started training with Eric when I was 12, so I have been with him for nearly 15 years now,’’ the past student of Indooroopilly State High and Milton Road State School said.

But the association actually started a year prior to Jones joining UQ Sport when, aged 11, she attended an athletics school holiday clinic at the venue as a sprinter and high jumper.

Caitlin Sargent-Jones with her long time coach Eric Brown at UQ Sport

“He (Brown) was coaching,’’ the 10-time Australian 400m runner recalled.

“He did not know me at the time and asked me what events I did. I said the 100m, the 200m and he said I was going to be a 400m runner one day.

“I did not know who he was. I thought ‘crazy old man’ but fast forward and he is coaching me.

“We stepped away from high jump across to 400m and, to cut a long story short, here we are.’’

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It is one of the longest coach-elite athlete partnerships in Australia, rivalling the well-known Wayne Bennett-Darius Boyd rugby league association (2006-18), and the 15-year Michael Bohl-Grant Irvine swimming partnership revealed late last year in The Westside News.

Caitlin Sargent. Pic by Richard Gosling

“The big thing about it is that it really is a partnership,’’ said Jones, who played junior Australian football with the KenmoreBears.

She said when setting training programs, Brown was willing to adapt.

“I feel like he is listening to what I am telling him.

“There is also a personal side to our relationship as well. He came to my wedding, I have known him for so long. Having that emotional connection as well is important.’’

Caitlin Sargent takes baton from Annelise Rubie in of Australia in Rio. Picture. Phil Hillyard

And the association is not about to end, with Jones aiming to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games team via representing Australia this year at both the world relays and world titles.

Jones, who lives in Yeronga, said first donning an Australian singlet at the 2010 world junior championshipswas what stoked a fire within her to continue in athletics.

“That was the first time wearing the Australian uniform,’’ she said.

Jones at the Australian All Schools and Youth Athletics Championships as a teenager.

“I had a great comp and I thought ‘this is really cool, this is what I want to do’.

“Just being in that environment, the atmosphere lifted me and I ran so well and I thought it was awesome.’’

Four years later at the 2014 Commonwealth Games she was a member of the 4x400m senior relay team which was fourth and last year on the Gold Coast the team was fifth despite running two seconds faster.

As a child at Milton State School she won medals.

In between was the Rio Olympics where Sargent-Jones’ relay team made the 2016 final and now she aims for a medal at the 2020 Olympics.

“In Rio we were just excited to be there and to make the final, but I think everyone realises if we are all running well wecan be contenders and really put our hand up for a medal,’’ she said.

Caitlin Jonesrepresenting Queensland. (AAP/Image Sarah Marshall)

Jones has been around the UQ Sport for 15 years and is enjoying being a mentor to younger members of coach Eric Brown’s group like Brooke Gillmeister and Ashley Moloney.

“I think I have not always had smooth sailing in my journey and any advice I can give to a young athlete, I think if I had that when I was younger how valuable that would have been.

“So I want to be a role model for young athletes,’’ said Jones, who said it was important to have a life outside athletics to take pressure off.”