Marcus Boyd of USA celebrates winning the Men's 400m Final (© Getty Images)
Built from the same mould as Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner, new world junior 400m champion Marcus Boyd is the latest in the production line of one-lappers from Baylor University in the United States.
The 19-year-old is coached at the Texas college by Clyde Hart, who is renowned as the most successful 400m coach in the world, and he occasionally trains with Wariner.
Training with Wariner is inspiration
As well as famously guiding Johnson to five Olympic titles and the World records at 200m and 400m, Hart coaches Sanya Richards, the world’s No.1 female 400m runner since 2005.
He also took Jeremy Wariner to the Olympic 400m title and to the brink of Johnson’s one-lap mark. Another of his pupils is Darold Williamson, a 44.27 man who has won Olympic and World relay titles. Hart’s influence at Baylor has earned the establishment the label “Quarter-Miler U”.
On the evidence of his performance at the Zawisza Stadium, Boyd may one day be spoken in same manner as those greats. With his time of 45.53, he is closing in on Wariner’s best time during his last year as a junior. Wariner ran 45.13 as a 19-year-old and 12 months later he was winning his Olympic title in Athens.
However, Boyd’s win in the 400m was perhaps the biggest shock in the championships up to that point. His compatriot, O’Neal Wilder, had run half a second quicker than anyone else in the field. When the pair met at the US Junior Championships last month in Columbus, Wilder won in 45.62, while Boyd was some distance behind with a PB of 46.02.
Boyd admitted he was a little overawed by Wilder being such a big favourite.
Going out fast so others couldn't catch him was winning tactic
“It did affect me a little bit, but I tried not to think about it too much. I had to go out there and run my race.”
That was the best policy, running out of lane eight on the nine-lane track – and that is how he ran it, with Grenada’s Kimani James demoting Wilder to third.
"If I got out hard, I had a feeling it would be hard for them to catch me,” he said. “So I made them try to catch me and they couldn't.
"At the 250 mark I could feel some of the other runners coming up on me. I was running relaxed at that point, so I knew I had the edge. When I made my move I was able to hold on.” Boyd thus emulated the win of his fellow alumni Williamson in 2002.
The 6ft 1in former American footballer receives some advice from his father, who is an athletics coach, but he has the best perhaps the best instructor of all in Hart.
“I don’t know why he’s so great, but he’s been in the track and field game for a long time,” he said. “He has a lot of experience and knows how to work us hard.”
He also paid tribute to Hart in helping him peak for Bydgoszcz after such a long season, with US college athletes having to start much earlier than elite athletes on the world tour. He raced twice in March and once in April.
“I’ve never had a season this long,” he said. “The workouts my coach gives us help us to last long throughout the season so I peak around the right time.”
Inspired by Johnson's 1996 World record
Boyd was inspired to take up athletics seriously by watching Johnson at the 1996 Olympics where he won both 400m and 200m, setting his awe-inspiring World record of 19.32 in the latter. It even motivated him to turn down offers from many other respected Texan universities to follow in his footsteps and go to Baylor.
“One of my biggest idols is Michael Johnson,” he said. “He’s the reason why I wanted to go to Baylor because I saw how great it made him in the 400m and Jeremy Wariner, I work out with him some times.
“I guess I got really aware of him at the 1996 Olympics when he broke the world record in the 200m. I was probably just running around for fun. It moved me to take it to the next step and try to be that great.”
Boyd started at Baylor last autumn and since then has had chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Wariner, even though the Olympic champion left Hart shortly afterwards to team up with another of the college’s coach’s, Michael Ford.
“Jeremy’s been practising with us a couple of times and it motivates us a lot to see people like him out there,” he said
Ford has compared Boyd’s fluent style with that of Wariner and believes the 19-year-old could go on to achieve similar success.
"The turnover they both have and their endurance is rare," Ford was quoted as saying last year. "At this time in his career, Marcus is probably ahead of where Jeremy was in the 200. Once Marcus gets on the track, he has that button that he flips on. I can definitely put him in the category of a Jeremy Wariner and a Darold Williamson."
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Paul Halford for the IAAF
