media_artricles :: 2012

Promise of summer

Madison Square Garden must have been a good place to be last Saturday. In out of the blistering cold of a New York winter, you would have been privy to a taste of summer, via the US Open.

No, this was not the tennis grand slam come early, but the annual indoor track and field meeting.

In this Olympic year, when summer across the "pond" in London will be hot regardless of the temperature, this was an early glimpse as to how some of the medal contenders are beginning to shape up.

So it was pleasing indeed to pick up Monday's Express and catch Renny Quow bursting through the tape on the back page.

There was the Tobago boy on the left in blue, chest up, brushing the Budweiser tape to win the 600-yard race, while Bershawn Jackson, former Olympic champion in the 400 hurdles, all in black, lunged in vain to reclaim the lead he had just lost.

Later on Monday, I caught the closing stages of that duel on TV. Quow powered through on the home stretch to catch and pass "Batman" as they call Jackson.

That finish had a familiar feel to it. Many has been the time that gutsy Renny has grabbed gold with a power run at the death. Finishing strong is his specialty. To see him do so again, but at the very start of what is a really big season, was heartening.

There were others, of course, who made strong first impressions in the "Garden".

Asafa Powell really ran the 50 metres dash in a hurry—5.64 seconds—the fastest time over the distance in a decade. His Jamaican teammate Nesta Carter was second in 5.67.

Their countrywoman Veronica Campbell-Brown—defending Olympic and World 200m champ and World 60m title holder—breezed over the same 50m distance in 6.08.

"It's a step in the right direction," she said afterwards. "Each race is just a preparation for what's to come this season."

All the early season standouts thus far, Quow and T&T 200/400 runner Lalonde Gordon included, will likely feel the same as VCB.

A place in the final in London's Olympic stadium in July/August is really what the action between now and June will be geared towards.

Gold medals don't come so easy.

Usain Bolt might make sprinting look like a cruise. But even he has had to go step by step, training session by training session, to be in a position to run 9.58 and 19.19 in the 100 and 200 metres.

Truth is that medals in the Olympics will be won as much by what the winners are doing now, or have already done, as by what they will actually do in the various disciplines in London.

Off-season preparation counts for much in sports.

Have you noticed that it sometimes takes several games, or even the rest of a season for even a top striker like Wayne Rooney to find his best form after recovering from an injury layoff?

He may have been in training for weeks and is medically fit to play. But "match fitness" and top form take somewhat longer to achieve. Full recovery is even more complicated as an athlete ages.

Virender Sehwag, 33 and surely to be remembered as one of India's all-time cricket greats, has not scored a Test century since his return to the game after an injury layoff following India's successful World Cup campaign last year.

In seven Test matches he averaged less than 30.

By contrast, how much chance would there have been of that near six-hour classic of an Australian Open final last Sunday between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal had either of them not been in the excellent physical condition they are clearly in?

So, physical preparation will be vital if Quow is to get his career back on track. The past two years have been disappointing for a man who fought his way onto the podium at the 2009 Berlin World Championships, after clinching third place in the 400 metres. He ran his personal best at that meet, getting down to 44.53 seconds in the semi-finals.

Since then, Quow's best time has been 44.84 at last year's World Champs in Daegu, South Korea. But sub-45 times have been few and far between.

Hurdler Josanne Lucas has also found her historic bronze in Berlin a hard act to follow.

The first Trinidad and Tobago woman to win a medal at a global meet, Lucas did not come close to her medal-grabbing personal best 53.20 clocking in the 400m hurdles in 2011.

Her top time last year was only 56.86 and she did not go to the Daegu games. A persistent Achilles injury was her big problem.

As frustrating and literally painful as the past 12 months no doubt were for Lucas, she would much rather have endured that bad time in 2011 than this year. So far from what I've been told, things are looking better for her. She is injury free and had a good off-season. The next step will be to get competitive races in her legs.

Timing is indeed everything.

Like Quow and Lucas, Richard Thompson has also been off the pace these last couple years. Second to "Lightning Bolt" in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and fifth at the World Champs in 2009, Thompson was not even in the final when Bolt false started and Yohan Blake announced himself as the event's newest star.

But this is a fresh year. Like the day after the bad night before, there is the chance to clean the slate, clear your head and get a firm hold on your life.

The "Torpedo" is trying to do that now. He has made a switch in camps. Coached at present by John Smith, the man who guided Ato Boldon to four Olympic medals and made Maurice Greene a world beater, Thompson will at least have a storehouse of knowledge and experience to draw upon. Smith has produced champions. In Thompson he has an athlete who has already been close to the top and can be so again.

Perhaps this is the kind of change we may be talking about years from now and identifying it as the turning point in Thompson's career. Maybe the change to Smith may prove a masterstroke the way Bolt's switch to Glen Mills in 2004 shook up a career in danger of stalling.

It shall not be so long a wait for the answer.

Can't wait for summer.

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