News25 Jul 2005


New kids on the blocks

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kerron Clement wins the 400m Hurdles in USATF Champs (© Getty Images)

Kerron Clement and LaShawn Merritt are both 19, they both won gold at the World Junior Championships in Grosseto last year and they both turned in extraordinary 400m performances this winter. Elliott Denman portrays America’s next big sprinters.

Kerron Clement doesn't mean to be immodest. He shows no disrespect to his contemporaries or his predecessors. He simply tells it "the way it is."

And so, when he says "I'm definitely ready to be the best in the world," he cannot be shrugged off as a fantasizing egocentric.

He may be a teenager - approaching his 20th birthday on 31st October - but he already possesses a mature view of the international track and field scene he's set to invade in full force this summer of 2005.

Some of those who've seen this Trinidad-born University of Florida sophomore student in action think he has what it takes to be one of the finest 400 metre runners on earth. They say he could be a world-beater at the 200 metre distance, as well.

But Clement has a vision all his own.

"The 400 metre Hurdles is going to be my main focus," he declares. "That's going to be primary. Everything else will follow from there."

When he covered the one-lap, 10-barrier distance in 48.29 seconds at the Southeastern Conference Championships in mid-May in Nashville, Tennessee, it represented the No. 1 mark in the world to that point in the young 2005 season.

The 48.29 stayed on top of the world list exactly one week, trumped by the 47.62 turned in by USA colleague Bershawn Jackson in Carson, California.

Such is life in his sport's fastest lane, a location he's ready to inhabit by the end of the summer.

After just two seasons of collegiate competition - a world marked by strict adherence to the amateur code - Clement is ready to step away from it, to seek far greater challenges than those available in match-ups with other student-athletes.

He will soon sign a contract with a major sporting good's company  and join the growing ranks of those making the sport of athletics their profession.

"I've definitely enjoyed my time running for (the University of) Florida," he said in a recent interview. "But there comes a time in life when you have to step up, and this is that time for me."

There are some observers of the USA athletics scene who decry this leaping into professionalism as a negative factor, impacting adversely on the intense interest in the collegiate brand of the sport that exists in some hotbeds of activity around the nation.

University of Florida coach Mike Holloway is not one of this group.

"I've been fortunate to have had Kerron on this team for two years," he said. "I understand his reasons (for leaving collegiate competition.) It was a decision he had to make, and we wish him the very best in the future."

East Carolina University coach Bill Carson was not as fortunate as Florida's Holloway.

Carson, too, had seen a wondrously talented athlete enroll at his school, an athlete with similarly wide-ranging abilities in events up to the 400m.

But LaShawn Merritt's collegiate career at ECU lasted less than half as long as Clement's at Florida.

After just five meets as an East Carolina representative - the last one the Powered by Tyson Invitational indoor meet at Fayetteville, Arkansas on 11 February, where he sped to a 44.93 400-metre clocking, then third best in the all-time history of indoor track - Merritt signed a contract with a shoe company.

Clement will have had four NCAA (national collegiate) championship meets, two indoors, two outdoors, under his belt before saying his goodbyes to the Florida team. On the other hand, Merritt will have competed in zero NCAA meets.

Clement's winter 2005 signing - a week prior to the annual NCAA indoor meet in Fayetteville - was a pure shock to Carson, who saw nothing like that coming. It was also something he understood.

As he later put it, "the offer was something LaShawn couldn't turn down. "I tried to advise him to wait until after the (collegiate) season to perhaps enhance his leverage or standing, but Nike's package was simply too lucrative at this time. They felt a sense of urgency to market him for competition in June, and when you consider the addition of appearance fees, it became impossible for LaShawn not to sign."

So that's where it stood as the USA domestic season approached its critical phase of national championship competition - the NCAA Championships at Sacramento, California June 8-11, followed by the USA National Championships, June 23-26, back in California, at the Carson complex.

The Carson meet determined the makeup of the USA National Team bound for the 10th IAAF World Championships in Helsinki, Aug. 6-14.

Such is the intensity of the competition at the USA Nationals that no team positions - most notably in the 100m, 200m and 400m sprint events, or the 110m or 400m Hurdles, where the depth of talent is immense - can ever be guaranteed in advance of the meet.

So young athletes such as Clement and Merritt will simply have to put it on the line, pit their abilities against their more experienced rivals as well as an array of other promising youngsters. Few, however, would be willing to wager against their chances.

A year ago, Clement and Merritt, and their coaches, elected to "bide their time," to sit out the USA Olympic Trials so they could point to the IAAF World Junior Championships in Grosseto, Italy.

It turned out to be a golden decision for both.

Clement not only set a World Junior meet record of 48.51 taking the 400 Hurdles gold but (with a 44.9 lap) anchored the American team to a 3:01.09 World Junior record 4x400m relay triumph.

Merritt was equally unbeatable, taking the 400m in 45.25, then anchoring USA to a World Junior 4x100m record of 38.66, and contributing the 44.8 second lap that broke open the 4x400 World Junior record romp.

Team-mates in Grosetto, Clement and Merritt expect to be team-mates all over again in Helsinki, a prospect eagerly anticipated by American athletics enthusiasts - and with major concern from their international competitors.

Clement's route to the world stage has already been global. Born on 31st October 1985 - Halloween - in the Trinidad capitol of Port-Au-Prince, he came to the US with his parents at age 13.

"I'd run a few races, some 100s and 200s, down there (Trinidad) in school, but it was nothing serious," he said. "They told me I was a natural runner, but I was also slow."

Not until he enrolled at LaPorte High School in Texas, with its strong track and field programme, did he begin to treat the sport as a major activity in his life, and train seriously for it. Soon enough, one good thing led to even better things at each step along the road. The medals - from local, regional, state and national high school meets and the USA Track and Field Junior Olympics - piled up. And so was his amazing list of Personal Records.

By the time of his high school graduation, in June 2003, he owned bests of 13.52 for the high-school high hurdles and 50.13 for the 400 Hurdles, along with some eye-opening performances in each of the relays.

Merritt has had a different path to the top. Born on 27 June 1986 in Portsmouth, Virginia, in his state's Tidewater region, he had little support from classmates while at Portsmouth's Woodrow Wilson High School.

"I was one of the few guys on our team who took the sport seriously," he said. "Not a lot of people ever came to practice. To them, it was more a fun thing than anything else."

Merritt, though, was smart enough to see that the sport could offer him a lot more than casual frivolity. While others slacked off, he put his abilities to work - and all this effort quickly paid off. He collected Virginia state meet gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 400m, and was named USA's Verizon Youth Athlete of the Year for 2004.

From their divergent paths, they were both to create sensational headlines out of meets in Fayetteville, Arkansas the winter of 2005.

First up was the 1.88m tall / 82kg Merritt, at the Tyson meet on 11 February. He came into it as the relative unknown, in a field that also included US stars Bershawn Jackson, the 2003 US 400m Hurdles champion; and Andrew Rock, a 2004 Athens Olympic 4x400m team gold medallist, along with Grenada's Alleyne Francique, the 2004 World indoor 400m champion.

And he proceeded to leave them all in his slipstream.

He sped through the opening 200m in 21.04, out of lane six, and carried right on. Still, when the big digital clock stopped at 44.93, Merritt was as stunned as many of the observers. He'd run the second fastest 400m time in indoor history - trailing only Michael Johnson's 44.63 in 1995. Of course, it was another World Junior record.

"That's a great track they have in Arkansas (originally used at the 1993 World Indoor Championships in Toronto) and I wanted to take advantage of it," he said. "It has those wide turns and I wasn't going to hold back. But I didn't expect to run that fast, either."

All this happened on a Friday night. By midday Saturday, he'd added another World Junior record, this time with a 20.40 in the 200m.

It was Clement's turn to attack the Fayetteville track four weeks later, at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Speculation over the outcome of a classic Clement-Merritt duel - it would have been one for the ages, some fans had predicted - had evaporated with Merritt's pro signing a week earlier.

So now it was Clement's turn to make headlines of his own. He'd already run two quick races in the Friday prelims (20.50 200m and 46.05 400m) but was ready for far better things in the finals.

The 400m title race saw Clement get out fast, hit the 200m mark in 21.08, and keep on storming. Terry Gatson of Arkansas and Kelly Willie of Louisiana State, quality runners in their own right, were simply outclassed. Clement battled on through to cross the line in 44.57, World record time that erased a mark by none other than "MJ," and earned rounds of major applause.

"I was ecstatic, of course," said Clement. "I guess I shocked the world."

But his NCAA meet wasn't over. With vital team points still on the line, he placed sixth in the 200m final (20.63) and dug down once again to produce a 45.1 lap, as Florida won the 4x400m relay in 3:03.51, fastest indoor time ever recorded by a college team.

So when the outdoor season of 2005 arrived, these two - already featured on covers of "Track and Field News" - were clearly ready for huge performances.

Clement was in peak form at the Southeastern Conference meet. In addition to his 48.29 in the 400 Hurdles, he clocked a 13.95 in the 110 highs, and anchored his Florida team-mates to sizzling triumphs in the 4x100m (39.10) and 4x400m (3:02.23) relays.

Merritt chose the Jamaica International Invitational Meet on 7 May in Kingston, to make his outdoor debut, and was equally sensational. The big crowd gathered at the stadium where speed is revered had highest hopes for Jamaica's own Sanjay Ayre and Michael Blackwood. But they were not in Merritt's league this day. Neither was Andrew Rock. Merritt blasted around the track in 44.66, leaving Rock (44.75), Ayre (45.26) and Blackwood (45.32) to scrap for the other places.

The 44.66 was a 2005 world leader - until Olympic 400 champion Jeremy Wariner unleashed a 44.53 two weeks later.

"That was a good experience for me," said Merritt. "Big crowd, great fields, lots of big-time atmosphere. It's exactly what I know I'll see in Europe this summer."

Now athletics enthusiasts can't wait for the further exploits of these rising stars. Clement will continue to train in Gainesville, Florida under Holloway's tutelage, and remain a University of Florida student.

Merritt, however, has shifted bases from East Carolina, located in Greenville, North Carolina, to the Hampton, Virginia area, where he'll enrol at a local university and train under Steve Riddick, the 1976 Montreal Olympic 4x100m gold medal anchorman.

Can Merritt really threaten Michael Johnson's 43.18, in the books since the 1999 World Championships in Seville?

Can Clement endanger Kevin Young's 400 Hurdles World record, secure since his epic gold medal run at the 1992 Barcelona Games?

Questions, questions. The answers will be most intriguing.

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 2 - 2005

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