News20 Dec 2003


Coaching change is Crawford's key

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Shawn Crawford (USA) - 200m heats (© Getty Images)

Back in April, Shawn Crawford (USA) made a rather clear competitive statement to his fellow protagonists ahead of this year's main sprint battles. With his early season 10.07 and 20.08 performances in Pretoria, the 2001 World Indoor 200m champion provided a clear indication that he was prepared to pick up where he left off in 2002 when his 200m PB, a 19.85 that led the world that year, put him in a three-way tie as the tenth fastest ever to cover the half lap.

However, while he followed up with a handful of wins, clocked the second fastest 200 of the year (20.02 in Rome) and had a 10.07 to his credit, the American offered a blunt admission that his season lacked the flair he would have wanted.

"I wasn't as consistent as I would have liked to have been, and actually I didn't run the times that I wanted to run," he readily admitted.  "I think it was due to inconsistencies in my training program, and, really, I wasn't as focused as I should have been.  So that reflected in my performances."

Coaching change

A change, one he had been contemplating throughout the season, was in order. So Crawford, who turns 26 on January 14, packed up and moved a couple hundred miles north to Raleigh, North Carolina, and is now in his fourth week of training with Trevor Graham's high profile Sprint Capital group.

"I really wanted to get some serious training in for better negotiating leverage and to have a stellar year for the upcoming Olympic year," Crawford said of his decision to move. "I know that he can get me where I need to be. It wasn't really a hard decision.  If you want to run fast," he says, "you just need to move up there and train with Sprint Capital."

A three-time NCAA 200 champion while at Clemson - twice indoors and once outdoors - and co-bronze medallist in the half lap in Edmonton, Crawford trained in solitary mode since finishing college in 2000, a situation that had its drawbacks.

"It was hard, because I was working by myself. If I made up my mind that I didn't want to go to practice that day, I wouldn't go." 

In Raleigh, with training partners that include sprinters Justin Gatlin and Julian Dunkley and hurdlers Duane Ross and Dawane Wallace, that hole will be filled.

"It's like stepping on the competition line every day at practice," he says.  "I really enjoy that part.  It's going to help all of us out.  We're all going to benefit from it."

"2003 didn't go my way"

Even with a pair of solid season-ending performances - a narrow runner-up finish to J.J. Johnson at the World Athletics Final and a wind-aided 20.19 win in Yokohama - Crawford acknowledges that things in 2003 just didn't go his way.

"That race was tiring," he says of his narrow 20.35 to 20.37 loss to Johnson in Monaco. "I felt like I was not in shape. I don't think I was as in good of shape as I should have been for the whole season.  It's like I could lead a race for the first 150 meters and then lose in the last 50 every time. It's just disappointing that that happened." 

But, he adds, "I couldn't ask for more. First would have been good, but I was pretty satisfied with finishing second.  I could have gone there and finished dead last, because there were a lot of guys who had prepared, and prepared themselves harder than I had.  I can't complain about it."

but even out of shape...

Even "out-of-shape," Crawford managed to piece together a season which would rank him second this year in the IAAF's ranking, and fourth by the American magazine Track & Field News.  A lengthy massage after his 200 semi-final at the US Championships - "My legs were dead," he says, "and I just couldn't respond the way I needed to in my race" - slowed him to a disappointing sixth, leaving him off the team for Paris. But his exclusion from the World Championships squad was not the end-all for the season.

"Of course everybody wants to make the team," he says, "but it didn't really shoot me down in the sense that my season was done.  I knew I had more meets that I committed to and had obligations to fulfill, and I was shooting for personal bests, trying to drop my times."  He went on to win 200s in Zagreb, Helsinki and Rieti before his season ending races in Monaco and Yokohama.  At the latter, he beat World Champion John Capel by half a second.

Better at 200m?

Viewed by many as a better half lapper, Crawford said the decision of his 2004 focus lies entirely with Graham. "It depends on the program that he has in mind for me," he says.  "What he sees as the event I better fit into, where he sees that I can be most productive." 

He's not discounting an attempt at a sprint double in Athens, but only if his new coach sees that as a feasible alternative.

"In my mind, I know that the US Olympic Trials schedule and the Olympic schedule would allow for a person who has trained properly to be able to be a competitor in the 100 and 200, but I'm still going to leave that up to him, and let him make the call on that."

However, his personal preference is the shorter sprint.

"I like the intensity that's incorporated into the 100," he explains. "It's such a technical race.  In the 200, you got a little bit of time to make up for a mistake you made earlier in the race.  But in the 100 I just like the idea that you have to come with you're a game every time, because getting as close to perfection as you can is key in that race.  You have to be so technical in all points that you don't even have time to think to make up for a mistake."  He also enjoys the pressure and excitement inherent in the shorter dash, and , he adds with a smile, "it also pays better."

18.99 comment was not a jest

rawford is chided at times for a remark he made in the past in which he said his personal goal in the 200 is 18.99, but he insists the comment was not made in jest.

"I'm really serious about that, I really want to run some super-human times," he says.  Rather than setting limits, Crawford seems intrigued by the untapped potential of the human body.  "I just want to push my body to the limit.  I want to take the human body to the limit, to it's full potential.  I think with hard work and with proper nutrition and proper rest, there's no telling what the body can do."

He concedes that such a performance looms somewhere in the distance. "That's just something to shoot for.  And hopefully shooting for that goal, it would bring some phenomenal times and some personal bests.  That's something that I really want to run in the future."  With a laugh, he adds, "But I guess since I haven't run 19.5, so making 19.5 would be a good  start."

Before he kicks off his indoor season - either at the Boston Indoor Games or New York City's Millrose Games - comes another major change: his wedding on January 24 to long-time girlfriend Michelle Gordon in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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