Former Jamaican international athlete Lacena Golding-Clarke, according to SportsNow, has said that Tobi Amusan’s incredible world record run at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, USA in July ‘was something that had been brewing for a while.’
Golding-Clarke, an Olympian and 2002 Commonwealth Games champion, is the coach of reigning World 100m hurdles champion, Amusan.
READ MORE: Tobi Amusan smashes 100m hurdles world record at World Championships
A former sprint hurdler herself who represented Jamaica at three Olympic Games and five World Championships says she knew the 25-year-old Nigerian would break the world record and actually expected her to be close at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar in 2019.
“In 2019, before we travelled to Doha (for the World Championships), I sort of had an inclination that she may come close, but that she might run in the 12.2s,” she said in a World Athletics’ gender leadership podcast.
“In 2020, during the pandemic, we trained so hard. I had a feeling then that she could, but I did not expect that the world record could be broken by such a time. I was thinking she could go 12.19 or 12.18, but I am just happy that I was a part of it. Hoping for a world record every year, but this year it all just happened at once.”
READ MORE: Tobi Amusan’s 100m hurdles world record officially ratified by World Athletics
Amusan has been under the watchful eye of Golding-Clarke since 2016 during her days at the University of Texas at El Paso, where the Jamaican helped to take her from a 13.11s athlete to a 12.12s athlete.
Golding Clarke said Amusan initially “had it in her” but it was the technical work that needed attention, so the two slowly built Amusan’s general strength, followed by her mental focus, to ensure she was equipped to overcome all 10 barriers in a 100m hurdles race.
According to Golding-Clarke, the focus for 2022 was to work on Amusan’s speed and for the Nigerian “to be able to hold the hurdle rhythm all the way through to the finish line.”
