DESTINY IN DOHA 2019
2019 DESTINY IN DOHA
“Winning the world tle would mean a huge deal,” he said on August 19. “I’m a championship performer, I know exactly what it takes to win a tle”, McLeod chanted, with a tacit reminder that winning is all he has ever done. From Caria tles at Manchester High, to record breaking wins at Kingston College, 3 NCAA tles at the University of Arkansas, the 25‐ year‐old is a genuine champion. “I know me so well that if I’m in the right situaon with a coach that knows what he’s doing and has confidence in me and trusts that I can get the job done and I have equal trust in him”, he self‐ assessed, “then we can do magic.” He won the Shanghai Diamond League race on May 18 with a season’s best me of 13.12 sec‐ onds as a tribute to his late aunt, who was a constant source of in‐ spiraon. Wins have been hard to come by since then. “I don’t take my competors for granted, they’re all great athletes,” he re‐ ported, having lost five straight races since Shanghai. Rock boom came in Rabat where he led to hurdle 8, lost his balance, veered to his right and collided with the man he unseated as World Champion, Russia’s Sergey Shubenkov. That undy loss sets up a familiar scene. He fell in his last two races before he won the Olympic gold medal in 2016. In 2017, he hit an early hurdle in Paris and spoiled an otherwise perfect season with a lowly seventh place finish. Then he won in London.
“But I know me, and I can only sck to what I know”, he added. As proof, aer switching to the coaching of American Rana Reider, McLeod won the Birmingham Diamond League in 13.21 seconds on August 18. “I know that if I’m
With the London chill freezing the socks off the Jamaican team at the 2017 World Champion‐ ships, one man kept the black‐green‐and‐gold flag flying: 110‐metre hurdler supreme Omar McLeod. Now aer the loss of his beloved aunt and two coaching changes in a year, McLeod is a man on a mission. Simply put, the 25 year‐old Jamaican is going to the Doha to win.
healthy and happy”, he pro‐ claimed, “I’m unstoppable.”
If he is right, McLeod, the man who holds the Jamaican record at 12.90 could join Americans Greg Foster and Allen Johnson as the only men to retain the world 110‐ metre hurdles tle. Foster won in 1983, 1987 and 1991. Johnson defended the tle twice with wins in 1995 and 1997 and again in 2001 and 2003. American newcomers Grant Hol‐ loway and Daniel Roberts lead the yearly performance list at 12.98 and 13.00 seconds flat, while Olympic runner‐up Spain’s Orlando Ortega defeated the Ja‐ maican in Nanjing and Stanford. Nevertheless, McLeod can see himself on top in Doha. “My goal is just to get out, take control and let the race come to me”, he pro‐ fessed in August. Don’t write him off.
MCLEOD: UNSTOPPABLE IN DOHA? HUBERT LAWRENCE
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