Doucouré is on the right track

Following his 13.06 national record breaking semi-final win at the Athens Olympic Games Ladji Doucouré was expected to step on the 110m Hurdles Olympic podium the following day. However the Frenchman stumbled over the last obstacle losing his balance and all hopes of a medal in the process. Yet he’s already back on track with a European Indoor gold medal around his neck. By Céline Longuèvre.

The first thing Allen Johnson noticed about Ladji Doucouré, when he saw him race in the World Indoor Championships final in Birmingham back in 2003, was the unusual stance of the young man as he waited for the starter's gun.

"I remember thinking how strange he looked, with his head held high, staring at the first hurdle. Of course, I had no doubt that, given his presence, he was fast," recalls Johnson, who went on to win the race.

That day, Doucouré had finished fourth, ahead of his hero Colin Jackson, and just behind the Chinese athlete Liu Xiang.

Liu Xiang and Ladji Doucouré's rivalry stretches back to 2000, when the Frenchman finished third, ahead of Liu Xiang, who was fourth, in the IAAF World Junior Championships in Santiago de Chile.

Since then, they have also come head to head in the Athens Olympic Games Final, which was won by Liu Xiang whilst Ladji Doucouré, risking everything to make up for a poor start, clattered into the final hurdle and, totally off balance, came in last.

This misadventure did nothing to diminish his standing in the eyes of the French public, who by then had come to view the 21-year-old as a true hero of modern times, following the extraordinary manner in which he had qualified for the final. In the first qualifying round he had beaten the French national record, held by Stéphane Caristan since 1987 (13.18 against 13.20).

He equalled the same time in the quarter finals before lowering it further still in the semi-finals with a superb 13.06. On each occasion, his time was the best out of all the other qualifiers, and this panache and will-to-win are what captured the French fans' imagination.

Their adulation grew further still when a journalist revealed that Ladji Doucouré had recently turned down his appearance fee at the Paris-Saint-Denis Meeting. Having caused two false starts and thus been disqualified, Doucouré did not feel that he deserved anything and had asked for the fee to be paid to the club he has always belonged to, that of Viry-Châtillon, a suburb to the south of Paris.

Some months later, he was designated 'French Athlete of the Year', prompting him to declare that he did not believe he deserved such an honour, and that it should have gone to Naman Keita, the only individual athlete to have won a medal in Athens.

But that is the way Ladji is - straightforward and modest. Once his coach, Renaud Longuèvre, had reassured him that he was pleased with what he had accomplished in Athens; Doucouré rapidly put his Olympic disappointment behind him, declaring at the press conference, less than an hour after his final that both men were already planning ahead.

“Immediately after the Games, we got together and decided that we would not let this set-back affect us but that, on the contrary, we would attempt to seize every possible opportunity available," recalls Doucouré.

The first of these opportunities was the European Indoor Championships in Madrid, in which Ladji Doucouré, after a stressful final with no less than four false-starts, managed to stay focused and to win his first senior title.

"That day he showed how strong he is mentally," says his coach, who considers that title to be 'the ground floor' of a building which needs five others to make up a serious list of honours.

The next major objectives on the list are the European and World Championships – both outdoor and indoor – and then the Olympic Games.

The blossoming of the gifted young athlete's talent came as no real surprise for anybody familiar with the manner in which he has developed.

For a long time he considered athletics as little more than a game, and he admits readily to not even really enjoying it at first. One day when he was a young boy, in the 'Plateau', one of the poorer housing projects in the area, he went along to the local track with one of his friends. He saw it though, in the same vein as Boro - a year older than him - as simply a way of getting fitter for football, his true passion at the time.

But when a bad tackle broke his shin, in the course of an ill-tempered match, his father insisted that, as he would never amount to anything as a footballer, now his leg was damaged, he should persevere in athletics.

That was when Doucouré, tired of his friends teasing him, decided that he would do everything in his power in order to progress and '...show everybody what I am capable of!'
Under the watchful eye of Reinhard Janik, his first coach, Ladji started learning to hurdle, whilst dabbling in the Pole Vault, overseen by Renaud Longuèvre, a vaulter who had only recently retired from competitions himself.

This was to prove the beginning of a long partnership. In those days, Longuèvre recalls, Ladji was really skinny. However, when he hit 15, the lad suddenly shot up 15 centimetres in a year and rapidly gained in both strength and power.

At the same time, he was extremely well coordinated and possessed with the rigour and independence of mind that their father had instilled in all four of his sons. As a telling illustration of his upbringing, Ladji remembers all four of them one day being given an underground ticket each and told to meet up with their father at a pre-determined place in Paris.

In 1999, Ladji Doucouré became World Youth champion over the hurdles. The following year, he enjoyed a fantastic World Junior Championships in Chile, winning a bronze medal in the 110m Hurdles and a silver medal in the 4x100m. These championships also discovered a deep-rooted ambition within him, that of doing everything in his power to win titles and to see France triumphing in athletic stadiums around the world.

This approach is shared by his friends of his generation, such as Leslie Djhone, Ronald Pognon or Florent Lacasse. These athletes have often been hurt and unhappy with the perceived lack of ambition of some of their elders over the past seasons as by the derogatory comments heard after the extremely poor showing at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, where none of them was actually present.

For Ladji Doucouré, that couple of years were the ones which shaped his future. "One day, I will specialize. But that means that I will go from ten to three events - my better ones, which means hurdling, sprinting and long-jumping."

Because in those days, the young prodigy was trying his hand - successfully - at everything.

By having his young athlete competing in multi-eventing, Renaud Longuèvre was intent on maintaining Ladji's motivation, whilst providing him with as many opportunities as possible to beat his personal bests.

In 2001, Ladji won the French National Decathlon Championships with a total of 7794 points, before being crowned European Junior champion in Grosseto.

The following year he was looking forward to taking part in the World Junior Championships in Jamaica. Unfortunately, a severe groin strain affected his season. This forced him to learn both how to be patient, and also to be very careful when preparing and training so as not to overstrain his body.

Training in the same group as Linda Ferga-Khodadin, one of the best athletes to learn from in this domain, Ladji Doucouré began to focus on his diet as well as on his warming-down routines, both vital for any athlete wishing to remain at the top of any sport.

Renaud Longuèvre also stimulated him further, both mentally and physically, by taking him, along with the rest of the group, on a training camp in Moscow, a stay which opened Ladji's eyes as to the privileged conditions he was used to back home.

And, for the past two years, he has been spending every January in the USA - last year in Gainesville and this year in Orlando. These have been ideal opportunities to compete against the excellent level of opposition that is found on the collegiate circuit.

He has been using this also to experiment, away from the glare of the spotlights, with a new, more conventional, starting position. He has also competed twice against Allen Johnson this winter. The huge respect he has always had for the quadruple World champion, meant that Ladji Doucouré suffered for a long time from a slight, albeit unconscious, inferiority complex.

But, gradually, by coming up against him more often, the Frenchman has succeeded in overcoming this mental block. This was first illustrated at the Liévin Meeting, just before the European Indoor Championships, when Ladji Doucouré appeared to burst out of the blocks.

“He surprised me," admitted Johnson. "I have been used to expecting him to be trailing slightly by the first hurdle. This time, however, he was right up there with me."

And as the young hurdler is renowned for being one of the fastest runners between each hurdle, he won that race, in yet another national record - taking from Stéphane Caristan the last one he still held.

For Ladji, nowadays, track is much more than simply a game - his biggest pleasures are derived from his many triumphs.

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 1 - 2005