With a few races under his belt this season, reigning World Indoor 60 metres Hurdles champion Terrence Trammell's road to Birmingham begins in earnest this weekend at the Verizon Millrose Games in New York City, where he will attempt to win an unprecedented sprint/hurdle double in a span of just 25 minutes.

"My training's going pretty well these days, I feel a lot stronger," the 24 year-old said, quite confident that he's up to the task on Friday evening. "You know, it's a challenge, but I feel that I'm able to compete well in both events and I'd like to try my hand at it."

With early season bests of 6.61 in the flat race and 7.53 in his specialty-races he describes as "tune ups", Trammell seems poised to return to the form that led him to the top of the podium in 2001.

While a strong competitor at the collegiate level, Trammell burst onto the international scene in 2000, first with a third place showing at the US Olympic Trials, and then with a surprise 13.16 performance to strike Olympic silver in Sydney behind Cuban Anier Garcia. Six months later in Lisbon, Trammell overcame a horrendous start to out-lean Garcia in 7.51, beating back the Cuban by three one-hundredths of a second to claim World Indoor gold. But he struggled later that year and in 2002. He managed to make the US squad for Edmonton, but missed a spot in the final by one one-hundredth of a second, finishing third in his semi-final behind eventual bronze medallist Dudley Dorival.

Those struggles, Trammell believes, are behind him, now that he has completed his degree in Retail Management from the University of South Carolina.

"I'm very relieved, that was big weight off my shoulders." Figuratively, it seems, as well as literally."This is actually the first time that I've been able to go to a track meet and not worry about carrying three or four textbooks."

And as a results, he says, it'll be a more focused athlete that defends his World Indoor title on March 15. "I'll be able to focus and relax more. The past two years I've been a full-time student as well as an athlete. On this level, with these calibre athletes, you can't really afford to have too many things take you away from the track. I felt kind of like I was at a disadvantage for a while, but I understand, and I value my education very much. Now I'm able to train and take in little things that I wasn't able to take care of when I was in school."

While such a double win would be unprecedented at the prestigious Millrose event, Trammell has some experience with the short recovery the meet schedule imposes. At the 2001 adidas Golden Spike Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho, he managed a 7.66 and 6.45 double victory, the latter a personal best, after 17 hours of airport delays forced him to compete on just four hours sleep. "It all comes down to the fitness level of the athlete," he insists. "I just want to go out and execute my technique."

That technique has come a long way, thanks to his relationships with coach Curtis Frye and training partner Allen Johnson.

"It's an extreme asset to train with someone like Allen," he says of the three-time World champion and Atlanta Olympic gold medallist. "I mean, I think Allen can run until he's forty or 45.  He's that caliber athlete. Just the knowledge and the wisdom he's passed on to me has been instrumental to the way I've been able to compete." Theirs is a competitive attitude, he says, that can be likened to "going against an older sibling."

Is he still learning from the Johnson? "I don't think you can ever know everything about hurdling. It's such a unique event. The amount of technical knowledge and skill you have to portray on the track takes a lot of concentration and focus. I think it takes quite a while to maximize the potential. They always say, 'you can never run a perfect hurdles race', although that's what all hurdlers try to do."

As the defending national champion in the 60 metres, Trammell said he would like to aim for a double at the national indoor championships in early March, but such an attempt is "still up in the air," something he and Frye will decide in the next few weeks. "We're trying to determine if that will be feasible. That would be a pretty big challenge, though I would like to be able to do so."

Bob Ramsak for the IAAF