media_artricles :: 2013

Johnson to Jehue: Watch the wagonists

World champions Jehue Gordon and Brianna Rollins were the beneficiaries of sound words of advice from 1996 Olympic men’s 110 metres hurdles gold medallist Allen Johnson.

Gordon, Trinidad and Tobago’s men’s 400m hurdles world champion, and Rollins, who struck gold for United States in the women’s 100m hurdles at the 2013 Worlds, were holding court at the Fairmont Monte Carlo Hotel, in Monaco, yesterday, when the interviewer, T&T’s quadruple Olympic medallist Ato Boldon, introduced Johnson as a surprise guest.

“The better you get,” Johnson told the young champions, “the more bandwagonists there are going to be. The faster you run the more people that are going to be there to tell you what you need to do to run a little bit faster. It can be stressful.

“But always remember why you started doing this. I used to always say the reason I love track and field so much was because I’m an adult and I got a chance to still go outside and play…Just have fun, and you guys are going to have great, great careers.”

Gordon and Rollins are among the reigning world champions in Monaco for today’s IAAF World Athletics Gala.

Boldon told Gordon that John Smith, the man who coached Kevin Young to the 46.78 seconds 400m hurdles world record way back in 1992, believes the 21-year-old T&T track star has what it takes to erase the global mark from the books. Gordon, however, is not focusing on the sizzler that earned Young Olympic gold at the Barcelona Games.

“The world record will take care of itself. That’s a lot of pressure on somebody my age. For me, it’s just trying to be more consistent, trying to show people that Jehue is here to stay, I have the talent, and it’s not just a one floops. And hopefully, follow in your (Boldon’s) footsteps, branching off. It might not be NBC, but it could be BBC, or…”

The IAAF Athletes of the Year will be named today, and celebrated at the Gala.

The three finalists among the men are Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, British distance runner Mo Farah and Ukrainian high jumper Bohdan Bondarenko. The women’s finalists are Jamaican sprint queen Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, New Zealand shot putter Valerie Adams and Czech 400m hurdler Zuzana Hejnova. All six were golden at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Russia.

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