David Oliver of the US dominated the 110m hurdles in Split (© Getty Images)
In part four of their annual season review, statisticians A. Lennart Julin (SWE) and Mirko Jalava (FIN) recall the 2010 season's key action in the HURDLES.
MEN –
28-year-old American David Oliver took his place as the world’s clear number one hurdler during the 2010 outdoor season. World record holder and reigning Olympic champion Dayron Robles (CUB) might have had injury problems during the outdoor season, but that wasn’t more than just a small part of Oliver’s emphatic dominance which brought 15 wins in 15 starts. The bronze medallist in the last two major championships in Beijing and Berlin, American Bershawn Jackson was almost as impressive in the 400m hurdles. Following a gold in the 4x400m relay at the World Indoors in Doha, Jackson closed in on his 2005 personal best 47.30 from the 2005 World Championships clocking 47.32 to win the US title in June and finished in the top three in each of his 12 finals of the season, winning nine.
110m Hurdles –
In the 110m Hurdles David Oliver established himself in the world elite in 2008 when he won his first US title (12.95w) and recorded his first sub 13-second race in Doha winning in 12.95 there. But in Beijing he was not able to challenge new World record holder Dayron Robles although he did get an Olympic bronze medal well behind the Cuban. The 2009 outdoor season was cut short for Oliver, who was injured in June and could not take part to the US Championships.
Following a good 2010 indoor season which brought Oliver the bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Doha behind Robles, the American started his outdoor campaign on a high note. After a couple of low key wins in the US, Oliver won with a fast 13.12 result in Ponce at the start of May and then continued with a win over Robles in Daegu clocking 13.11 11 days later, the only clash in 2010 between the top two hurdlers during this season. Oliver, who is very active with his Twitter account offering his thoughts sometimes more than once a day, went on from one good race to another during the most important time of the season.
The first of five sub 13-second clockings came in Shanghai in May (12.99) followed by a 12.93 win at the US Champs. Oliver then challenged Robles’ World record 12.87 twice in a row first getting the American record 12.90 in Eugene at the start of July and then just two weeks later bettering that in Paris with a 12.89, the 2010 world leading time. Then wins in Monaco, London, Zürich (12.93) and the Continental Cup in Split capped a fine season for the American. It remains to be seen whether he can carry his form to the 2011 season with the World Championships in sight.
Surely Robles will be there and former World record holder, Olympic and World champion Liu Xiang as well. The Chinese had only raced once before November, losing by a big margin to Oliver in Shanghai clocking 13.40, but his injury worries seem to be totally shrugged off as he took his third straight Asian Games title in Guangzhou at the end of November with a fast 13.09 result, third in the 2010 world list.
The United States remains a dominant force in this event with 39 athletes in the world top 100. France and Germany are tied for second with seven each.
400m Hurdles –
It was a good year for the men’s 400m Hurdles. A total of six athletes dipped under 48 seconds, three of them new entries to this important barrier. 27-year-old American Bershawn Jackson, the 2005 World champion, was the number one name in 2010 and also the world leader at 47.32. Jackson registered six wins in eight Diamond League meets, but faded to third at the Continental Cup. Six races under 48 seconds and nine wins in 12 starts easily made him the best 400m hurdler of the season.
Fellow American Kerron Clement, the winner of the last two World titles, started his season well winning four out of five in May/June, but then only raced once afterwards placing last in Lausanne in July. The reigning Olympic champion from Beijing, Angelo Taylor (USA), who also won in Sydney 2000, raced only six times over the barriers in 2010 with mixed results. A very good 48.16 debut in Baie Mahault on May Day was followed by a lowly 49.66 in Doha. Then Taylor found his rhythm again with fast races 47.96 in Lausanne and a 47.79 season’s best in Monaco, but then faded back to 49.57 in Stockholm and 49.72 in Brussels.
NCAA Champion Johnny Dutch (USA) had run 48.12 at the East Regionals in Greensboro and his second fastest time was his NCAA-winning 48.75 from Eugene, so it was quite a shock when he lowered his personal best to 47.63 with a second place finish at the US Champs in Des Moines. Twenty-six-year-old Javier Culson of Puerto Rico, already a World Championships silver medallist behind Clement last year, set a 47.72 national record in Ponce in May for his first sub 48-second clocking. European Champion, Briton David Greene joined the club with a 47.88 win at the Continental Cup before grabbing the Commonwealth Games title as well in October.
The United States had 25 athletes in the world top 100. Japan had 11 for second and Jamaica nine for third place.
WOMEN -
100m Hurdles -
This must be most popular event among meet organisers: Besides the seven scoring events in the Diamond League also three of the other DL meets added the women's 100m Hurdles to their programme. And the popularity is easy to understand as the top athletes always seem ready to compete against each other in a way never seen, for example, in the flat sprints. Typical head-to-head scores from this year were Canadian Priscilla Lopes-Schliep 7-4 vs American Lolo Jones who in turn was 11-2 vs Perdita Felicien, another Canadian.
The outdoor season started out with Jones – fresh from her brilliant win at the World Indoors in Doha – slightly ahead as proven by her winning the first three DL events (Doha, Oslo and New York). But then the tide turned and Lopes-Schliep had an absolutely brilliant August with five straight meets – Stockholm, London, Zurich, Berlin and Brussels – at sub-12.60 (between 12.52 and 12.59). The only small blemish to an otherwise perfect record was losing by 0.02 to Australian Sally Pearson in Stockholm.
Pearson's last month of the European summer wasn't much inferior as she only lost to Lopes-Schliep and had her five major meets crammed into less than a tenth between 12.57 and 12.65, capped by taking the Continental Cup title (Lopes-Schliep absent). One month later Pearson added the Commonwealth gold.
Hurdlers traditionally have very long careers and although Pearson at 24 is the youngest of the top trio she has already been a major contender for a few years. But the year provided a couple newcomers to the top level filling the temporary (?) gaps created by the absence of figures like Brigitte Foster-Hylton, Dawn Harper and Susanna Kallur who missed 2010, wholly or in part, due to injuries.
Queen Harrison (USA) fresh from a successful career in the collegiate ranks quickly adopted to the new surroundings of professional athletics finishing 4th in her three late-summer Diamond League appearances - Stockholm, London and Brussels.
Two new Europeans also proving competitive on the global scene were Germany's Carolin Nytra and Turkey's Nevin Yanit. Nytra pressed Lopes-Schliep all the way to the finish line in Lausanne losing by a mere one hundredth (12.57 to 12.56) and added another 2nd place finish in Zurich where she defeated Jones. Yanit won the European title in a blanket finish with Derval O'Rourke (a true master at peaking for championships – her three by far fastest races of the year were the three rounds in Barcelona!) and Nytra.
400m Hurdles
Lashinda Demus opened her season in a manner that indicated that the World record would find it hard survive the year: 53.34 in Shanghai, 52.82 in Rome and 53.03 in Eugene. But then injury problems appeared for Demus and after a 4th place in Monaco in mid-July her season was over.
Although the top Jamaican Melaine Walker was out for the whole year it was still – of course – a Jamaican that took over the dominant position as Kaliese Spencer showed impressive consistency. After finishing 2nd to Demus in Rome and Eugene Spencer took the four remaining Diamond League wins and produced six times between 53.33 and 53.78 spread over two-and-a-half months.
Top European was Russia's Natalya Antyukh who in 2009 at age 28 returned to an event she hadn't pursued since she was a junior. The switch turned out quite well resulting in a 6th place in 54.11 at the World Championships. This year she began as a consistent 54-low runner until she shocked everyone in the European Championships final by running a technically and rhythmically nearly flawless race ending in 52.92, an improvement on the PB by over a second! This extraordinary peak turned out quite short-lived however and her four remaining competitions were all rather lacklustre 55-somethings.
Behind this top-3 there was a fairly large evenly matched group of athletes running in the 54-second range. The most consistent was Zuzana Hejnova (CZE) who in the Barcelona final – perhaps somewhat stunned by Antyukh's running? – just missed out on a medal being beaten by the new PB's of 53.82 and 54.18 for Bulgaria's Vanya Stambolova and the UK's Perry Shakes-Drayton.
Shakes-Drayton thereby also established herself as the most exciting newcomer to the world elite. But it didn't come as major surprise as she has shown a steady gradual improvement year by year: 8th in World Juniors four years ago, 2nd in European Juniors three years ago and 1st in European U23's last year. Time-wise she has improved by 1.06, 0.37, 0.83 and 1.08 the last four years.
This year's crop of juniors might of course also hide a Shakes-Drayton in their ranks although there was no one outstanding as the top-6 all ran PB's of 57-something in the Moncton final.
MEN –
28-year-old American David Oliver took his place as the world’s clear number one hurdler during the 2010 outdoor season. World record holder and reigning Olympic champion Dayron Robles (CUB) might have had injury problems during the outdoor season, but that wasn’t more than just a small part of Oliver’s emphatic dominance which brought 15 wins in 15 starts. The bronze medallist in the last two major championships in Beijing and Berlin, American Bershawn Jackson was almost as impressive in the 400m hurdles. Following a gold in the 4x400m relay at the World Indoors in Doha, Jackson closed in on his 2005 personal best 47.30 from the 2005 World Championships clocking 47.32 to win the US title in June and finished in the top three in each of his 12 finals of the season, winning nine.
110m Hurdles –
In the 110m Hurdles David Oliver established himself in the world elite in 2008 when he won his first US title (12.95w) and recorded his first sub 13-second race in Doha winning in 12.95 there. But in Beijing he was not able to challenge new World record holder Dayron Robles although he did get an Olympic bronze medal well behind the Cuban. The 2009 outdoor season was cut short for Oliver, who was injured in June and could not take part to the US Championships.
Following a good 2010 indoor season which brought Oliver the bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Doha behind Robles, the American started his outdoor campaign on a high note. After a couple of low key wins in the US, Oliver won with a fast 13.12 result in Ponce at the start of May and then continued with a win over Robles in Daegu clocking 13.11 11 days later, the only clash in 2010 between the top two hurdlers during this season. Oliver, who is very active with his Twitter account offering his thoughts sometimes more than once a day, went on from one good race to another during the most important time of the season.
The first of five sub 13-second clockings came in Shanghai in May (12.99) followed by a 12.93 win at the US Champs. Oliver then challenged Robles’ World record 12.87 twice in a row first getting the American record 12.90 in Eugene at the start of July and then just two weeks later bettering that in Paris with a 12.89, the 2010 world leading time. Then wins in Monaco, London, Zürich (12.93) and the Continental Cup in Split capped a fine season for the American. It remains to be seen whether he can carry his form to the 2011 season with the World Championships in sight.
Surely Robles will be there and former World record holder, Olympic and World champion Liu Xiang as well. The Chinese had only raced once before November, losing by a big margin to Oliver in Shanghai clocking 13.40, but his injury worries seem to be totally shrugged off as he took his third straight Asian Games title in Guangzhou at the end of November with a fast 13.09 result, third in the 2010 world list.
The United States remains a dominant force in this event with 39 athletes in the world top 100. France and Germany are tied for second with seven each.
400m Hurdles –
It was a good year for the men’s 400m Hurdles. A total of six athletes dipped under 48 seconds, three of them new entries to this important barrier. 27-year-old American Bershawn Jackson, the 2005 World champion, was the number one name in 2010 and also the world leader at 47.32. Jackson registered six wins in eight Diamond League meets, but faded to third at the Continental Cup. Six races under 48 seconds and nine wins in 12 starts easily made him the best 400m hurdler of the season.
Fellow American Kerron Clement, the winner of the last two World titles, started his season well winning four out of five in May/June, but then only raced once afterwards placing last in Lausanne in July. The reigning Olympic champion from Beijing, Angelo Taylor (USA), who also won in Sydney 2000, raced only six times over the barriers in 2010 with mixed results. A very good 48.16 debut in Baie Mahault on May Day was followed by a lowly 49.66 in Doha. Then Taylor found his rhythm again with fast races 47.96 in Lausanne and a 47.79 season’s best in Monaco, but then faded back to 49.57 in Stockholm and 49.72 in Brussels.
NCAA Champion Johnny Dutch (USA) had run 48.12 at the East Regionals in Greensboro and his second fastest time was his NCAA-winning 48.75 from Eugene, so it was quite a shock when he lowered his personal best to 47.63 with a second place finish at the US Champs in Des Moines. Twenty-six-year-old Javier Culson of Puerto Rico, already a World Championships silver medallist behind Clement last year, set a 47.72 national record in Ponce in May for his first sub 48-second clocking. European Champion, Briton David Greene joined the club with a 47.88 win at the Continental Cup before grabbing the Commonwealth Games title as well in October.
The United States had 25 athletes in the world top 100. Japan had 11 for second and Jamaica nine for third place.
WOMEN -
100m Hurdles -
This must be most popular event among meet organisers: Besides the seven scoring events in the Diamond League also three of the other DL meets added the women's 100m Hurdles to their programme. And the popularity is easy to understand as the top athletes always seem ready to compete against each other in a way never seen, for example, in the flat sprints. Typical head-to-head scores from this year were Canadian Priscilla Lopes-Schliep 7-4 vs American Lolo Jones who in turn was 11-2 vs Perdita Felicien, another Canadian.
The outdoor season started out with Jones – fresh from her brilliant win at the World Indoors in Doha – slightly ahead as proven by her winning the first three DL events (Doha, Oslo and New York). But then the tide turned and Lopes-Schliep had an absolutely brilliant August with five straight meets – Stockholm, London, Zurich, Berlin and Brussels – at sub-12.60 (between 12.52 and 12.59). The only small blemish to an otherwise perfect record was losing by 0.02 to Australian Sally Pearson in Stockholm.
Pearson's last month of the European summer wasn't much inferior as she only lost to Lopes-Schliep and had her five major meets crammed into less than a tenth between 12.57 and 12.65, capped by taking the Continental Cup title (Lopes-Schliep absent). One month later Pearson added the Commonwealth gold.
Hurdlers traditionally have very long careers and although Pearson at 24 is the youngest of the top trio she has already been a major contender for a few years. But the year provided a couple newcomers to the top level filling the temporary (?) gaps created by the absence of figures like Brigitte Foster-Hylton, Dawn Harper and Susanna Kallur who missed 2010, wholly or in part, due to injuries.
Queen Harrison (USA) fresh from a successful career in the collegiate ranks quickly adopted to the new surroundings of professional athletics finishing 4th in her three late-summer Diamond League appearances - Stockholm, London and Brussels.
Two new Europeans also proving competitive on the global scene were Germany's Carolin Nytra and Turkey's Nevin Yanit. Nytra pressed Lopes-Schliep all the way to the finish line in Lausanne losing by a mere one hundredth (12.57 to 12.56) and added another 2nd place finish in Zurich where she defeated Jones. Yanit won the European title in a blanket finish with Derval O'Rourke (a true master at peaking for championships – her three by far fastest races of the year were the three rounds in Barcelona!) and Nytra.
400m Hurdles
Lashinda Demus opened her season in a manner that indicated that the World record would find it hard survive the year: 53.34 in Shanghai, 52.82 in Rome and 53.03 in Eugene. But then injury problems appeared for Demus and after a 4th place in Monaco in mid-July her season was over.
Although the top Jamaican Melaine Walker was out for the whole year it was still – of course – a Jamaican that took over the dominant position as Kaliese Spencer showed impressive consistency. After finishing 2nd to Demus in Rome and Eugene Spencer took the four remaining Diamond League wins and produced six times between 53.33 and 53.78 spread over two-and-a-half months.
Top European was Russia's Natalya Antyukh who in 2009 at age 28 returned to an event she hadn't pursued since she was a junior. The switch turned out quite well resulting in a 6th place in 54.11 at the World Championships. This year she began as a consistent 54-low runner until she shocked everyone in the European Championships final by running a technically and rhythmically nearly flawless race ending in 52.92, an improvement on the PB by over a second! This extraordinary peak turned out quite short-lived however and her four remaining competitions were all rather lacklustre 55-somethings.
Behind this top-3 there was a fairly large evenly matched group of athletes running in the 54-second range. The most consistent was Zuzana Hejnova (CZE) who in the Barcelona final – perhaps somewhat stunned by Antyukh's running? – just missed out on a medal being beaten by the new PB's of 53.82 and 54.18 for Bulgaria's Vanya Stambolova and the UK's Perry Shakes-Drayton.
Shakes-Drayton thereby also established herself as the most exciting newcomer to the world elite. But it didn't come as major surprise as she has shown a steady gradual improvement year by year: 8th in World Juniors four years ago, 2nd in European Juniors three years ago and 1st in European U23's last year. Time-wise she has improved by 1.06, 0.37, 0.83 and 1.08 the last four years.
This year's crop of juniors might of course also hide a Shakes-Drayton in their ranks although there was no one outstanding as the top-6 all ran PB's of 57-something in the Moncton final.