Then a coach showed me a videotape of Don Quarrie, the Jamaican who won the gold medal in the 200 metres at the 1976 Montreal Games. Now, if I’d thought Michael Johnson was smooth when he raced, Don Quarrie made him look like a robot. That man took the corner so gracefully that it was almost an art form to me. Straightaway I had to perfect that aspect of my race, and the next time I practised I started emulating him on the corner.
It was clear from watching those old athletes that I still had to learn a lot about running the 200 metres. There was a lot of technical stuff to get into my head once I’d left the blocks, especially as I was a tall guy. Ideally, a sprinter should run the curve on the track as close to the line as possible, because it’s the most effective way of racing over 200 or 400 metres. The runner travels less distance that way, a bit like Lewis Hamilton cutting off the corner in Formula One racing.
For Quarrie, running tight on the 200 metre curve on a track was easier because he was small. He had a low centre of gravity. That meant he could control his shorter strides with ease. He wasn’t going to move around in his lane too much and lose time. I couldn’t do that, I was too tall. You bet I tried, but as soon as I picked up speed, my longer legs took me wide because I had less control.
In an attempt to get over the problem, I spent hours practising that racing line, and what I quickly realised was that I would have to run the first 50 metres of a 200 metres race in the middle of the lane. Once that was done, just as I’d hit top speed, I could drift closer to the inside line to run the corner more effectively. Then I would be around the turn and firing towards the finishing line like a slingshot, and I could get back into the middle of the lane. Well, that was the theory anyway. It didn’t always work out in practical terms.
All of a sudden, I was psyched by the 200 metres. Losing to Keith Spence had been the inspiration behind that process, and over the following year I began improving on my running technique. But there was also another very important boost to my ability: I had grown again. I was 14 years of age by the time it came to the regional champs a year later and I was six feet two in height. My stride was seriously long, too. When we lined up again in the 200, Keith Spence had nothing on me. He looked as bad as ever, he was ripped. But I was taller, sharper and much, much faster on the corner than before.
Bang! The gun fired. Because of Spence’s muscles he burst out of the blocks real fast, but once I’d taken the corner, he couldn’t keep up. I came off the curve with strength, I had started out in the middle of the lane and maintained a smooth rhythm. As I hit top speed I drifted over. My steps were tight to the line and when I hit the straight, every stride pushed me further and further away from my rival. I peeked over my shoulder. The kid was struggling to keep up.
By the time I’d crossed the line, I was out of sight. ‘Yo, I got him!’
I guess that was the moment of big discovery for me. I had to run the 200 metres in an effective style. But I’d created a mantra that would define my mental attitude towards opponents for the rest of my career. If I beat you in a big meet, you’re not going to beat me again. From that moment, I knew that once I’d taken a tough athlete for the first time, that was it. I had superiority and the confidence to win, again and again. It was a psychological stepping stone, and the realisation that gave me the mindset of a true champ.
I realised that, yeah, a runner could beat me in a one-off meet, a small event, but in a big championships, like my first ever school race at Waldensia, or the regional champs, it wasn’t going to happen – end of story. I had proven it with Ricardo Geddes, and now Keith Spence. I’d pushed on, and winning was now a serious habit.
* My successes were so regular that Miss Lee later arranged for the school sports day to take place when she knew I would be away at international competition – just to give the other a kids a chance.
† Damn, if only I’d listened. Over the last few years I’ve met some of those Spanish girls and a lot of them were seriously beautiful. The only problem was that I couldn’t converse with any of them at the time – in a club, at a party – because I didn’t speak the language. Miss Jackson had been right. I later became so vexed about the situation that I went out and bought the language computer program, Rosetta Stone, just so I could pick up a few phrases. I didn’t take too much away from it, but enough to know that anything sounds romantic in French and Spanish, but German is another story.
I stepped up again and again. Junior rivals fell like dominoes, and after Keith Spence I hit a winning streak at Jamaica’s regional level – I was hot. But despite my successes, track and field just seemed like a whole load of fun to me, nothing more.
That laid-back way of thinking was the perfect mindset for an athlete: I was relaxed before every race, I felt chilled about my performances; I didn’t get freaked out by tough events where the field was seriously strong. And I definitely didn’t stress about racing, not like some of the other kids did. They got nervous before their starts, they obsessed about smashing their personal bests. I had a champion’s confidence because I was so relaxed.
Following my victory over Spence, I worked harder in training, but not that much harder. Raw talent was still all I needed to win most races, but I upped my game a little. Sure, there were times when I’d skip training, and as soon as my absence was noticed, Coach McNeil would find me. He would cuss and lecture me as my ass was hauled back to school, but once our work had started at the track, I’d run nearly every lap on his training schedule.
Sometimes hard work wasn’t enough, though. Take Champs at the National Stadium in Kingston for example. When I qualified for my first appearance in 2001 at the age of 14, no running session in the world could have prepared me for that, because it was big, seriously big. I arrived at the event for the first time and my mind blew. The National Stadium was wild, a bowl-shaped arena with a track sunk into the ground and ringed by one vast stand which overflowed with people. It was built for serious competition, and I felt like a serious athlete.
Inside, it was just as I’d imagined from seeing it on the TV and reading about it in the newspapers. The fans were rowdy, everyone was going nuts. It was like being in a big South American football ground, where the supporters were ridiculously passionate. Before each race, as the runners stepped on to the lanes, kids from every school screamed at the top of their lungs and it was impossible to hear anything. I walked into that stadium for my first 200 metres heat and I got a rush from the noise. People banged on drums and played trumpets. The energy it brought to the arena gave me tingles. In that moment, Champs seemed like my Superbowl, Champions League final and Olympic Games rolled into one.
I was racing in Class Two, which was an under-16 event.* That meant I was one of the youngest competitors on the start line, and at that age one or two years could sometimes be quite a disadvantage in terms of physical power and technical ability. I didn’t let it faze me, I was there for the buzz, though anyone looking at the line-up would have thought I was the oldest in the race – I could see over the heads of every rival in the lanes.
A cool head was important at an event like Champs because stress could be a big thing for a lot of high-school athletes. School pride and prestige meant that there was some serious pressure to do well in the competition. A lot of hype was attached to being the school with the best track and field programme in Jamaica, so everybody upped their game. The standard was high. My A-race was going to be needed if William Knibb were to have chance of winning anything.
The competition worked on a team points system, and individual results were combined to determine an overall score, so my contribution would be