Bahamian sprinter Shaunae Miller (© Getty Images)
Shaunae Miller is an athlete reborn in 2015.
An outstandingly gifted age-group athlete and winner of world youth and world junior 400m titles, the tall, elegant Bahamian was long touted as a star in the making.
Aged just 19 at the time, she finished fourth in the 200m at the 2013 World Championships but 2014 – despite winning world indoor 400m bronze – proved hugely frustrating as she performed well below her capabilities. Her 400m season’s best was almost a full second shy of her quickest ever one-lap mark and her campaign fizzled out with a disappointing sixth-place finish in the 400m final at the Commonwealth Games.
Miller admits a year hampered by injuries “did not go too well” but sought to fix it. Sounding out her Bahamian team-mates, they recommended she hook up with Lance Brauman’s high-class training group in Clermont, Florida. She was instantly impressed and packed her bags to head south from the University of Georgia, where she had been coached by George Cleare.
“When I got down there, it was amazing,” says Miller, speaking at the Adidas press launch at the Ling Long Tower in Beijing’s Olympic Park. “The environment down there pushes you to be better every day.”
Coached by Brauman and Gary Evans and part of a crack training group which includes the likes of Nickel Ashmeade and Keston Bledman, she quickly thrived – even if, initially, the training load came as a huge shock to the system.
“When I first arrived, they gave me the papers for the first week’s workouts and I said, ‘you expect me to do this, are you kidding me?’” adds Miller, who was a little overwhelmed with the prescribed workload.
“I was so tired after practise I was power-napping every day for the first five or six weeks. We had a lot of hard workouts like 500s, but I had to do what I could to get through it. I just sucked it up to get it done.”
Off the track she also worked closely with the training group nutritionist to improve her dietary habits. Formerly adopting an approach of eating “pretty much what I wanted”, the 21-year-old, who towers at 6ft 1in (1.85m) tall, is now working to a strict eating regime. She has cut back on the chocolate, although the Bahamian admits to still enjoying an occasional taste of her favourite food.
Miller, whose first athletics memory was watching the Bahamian women’s 4x100m strike gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics aged six, says she has also thrived under the coaching partnership of Evans and Brauman.
“Gary brings the endurance and Lance the speed; when you combine them it is crazy,” says Miller. “I love them to death. They are the perfect team.”
These multiple factors contributed to a storming start to the season for the Bahamian. In April in Gainesville, Miller served notice of her new-found form by wiping more than half a second from her 400m lifetime best with 50.17. In May in Kingston she lowered Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie’s national 200m record with 22.14 – a time which still sits fifth on the 2015 world lists. Then in Lausanne she cracked the 50-second barrier for the first time in her career to storm to 400m victory in 49.92, fully validating her switch to Florida.
So has she been surprised by her form in 2015?
“I have. When you make a coaching change, you expect it to take time (to improve) and I don’t think the coaches were expecting so much of a drastic improvement,” admits Miller, whose parents Shaun and Mabelene will be in attendance in Beijing.
“We got things going quickly and the improvements came; I just feel so blessed,” added Miller, who says her coaching team decided post-Lausanne to target purely the 400m and not the 200m in Beijing.
Since that stunning display in Switzerland, Miller suffered a hiccup running the 200m in Monaco when she was forced to pull up sharply with a pinched nerve in her buttock.
The problem caused her to pull the pin on her further competition before Beijing but the issue is under control and should not hamper her performance in the Bird’s Nest Stadium.
“I was a little iffy for a while, but I didn’t take any time out (from training). The intensity (of training) was down a bit, but the last week has gone well and I feel like I am back now.”
Miller is the quickest in the field in Beijing by virtue of world leader Francena McCorory failing to qualify for the US team and with world number three Olympic champion Sanya Richards-Ross also a casualty at the US Trials, her path to gold has potentially been eased.
Yet the Bahamian takes no pleasure from their absence and fully understands the size the challenge she faces if she is to follow in the footsteps of her idol Marie-Jose Perec and become a world 400m champion.
“I don’t really like it that much (with McCorory and Richards-Ross not competing in the 400m). Everyone wants to race against the best, but the competition here is so good and with so many top athletes, it is going to be real competitive.
“There are the three Americans, four Jamaican athletes and Great Britain’s Christine Ohuruogu. There are a lot of top names out there. It is going to be great.”
Steve Landells for the IAAF
