Q&A: Brian Gregan: ‘The people who know and care about you will always be there, but outside of that you get totally forgotten’

Brian Gregan had been flagged as a potential star ever since his early teens, but the Dubliner became the forgotten man of Irish athletics in recent years after a series of interruptions. However, he roared back to life at the Morton Games in Santry this month, smashing his 400m personal best to win in 45.26. Ahead of his tilt at the World Championships in London, he will compete at the Irish Senior Championships in Santry this weekend

Q: Back in 2013 you had one of your best seasons, but you decided to change coach and eventually move abroad. Why was that?

A: I was coached by John Shields at the time and had a good season, but I felt I was getting a bit stale and needed to try something different so I moved to Johnny Coghlan. I had a decent season in 2014 but was training by myself and banging my head against the wall with some of the stuff we were doing, so I moved to London to train with Chris Zah’s group. I definitely don’t regret those decisions. I wanted to see if I could go from being a 45.5 guy to sub-45 and was looking at what David Gillick had done to make that jump.