WELCOME home John Steffensen. It’s good to have the both of you back.
So which Steffensen will we see at the Sydney Track Classic this Saturday night? The one that embraces the sport and everyone in it, or the one who threatened to take an AVO out against the Athletics Australia president at last years national championships?
Who cares, right? So long as Steffensen puts on a show in the 400m, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated race on the program at Homebush and the last before the Olympic Trials start in Melbourne on March 1.
Steffensen won the most recent 400m race in Perth and then slid on his knees with arms outstretched before the enthusiastic crowd. Was he seeking their adulation or reacting to it?
In the stadium of mirrors where Steffensen seems to have dwelled far too long running continuous laps of honour he is impervious to criticism or defeat. And so he seems unaware or couldnt care that he irritates many of his own teammates with his unoriginal bellicose gangsta patter, including this kind of taunt which followed his very narrow win in Perth: “It was a murder scene out there, the way I murdered their little boys. Someone should call 000. It was a crime scene.”
But one thing they surely envy is his capacity to create at least in his own mind the illusion of invincibility and then fight like a demon to defy the reality that he is far from impervious to pain.
It has always been a game of brinksmanship Steffensen has played out since making his first Olympic team in 2004, but then he plays it very well and afterall isnt that the very nature of elite track and field where excellence is never more than a stride ahead of defeat or injury.
So return the insults to Steffensen if you would, but on the track he is the most professional male sprinter Australia has at the moment and should be admired for committing himself to being the best he can be by seeking out history’s greatest 400m coach, John Smith, and then devoting himself to Smith’s program in the Los Angeles area ever since 2004.
Now, as we wonder how many more seasons Steffensen’s legs can support him in the brutal one-lap test of speed and stamina - he is the last man standing of the Silver Bullets 4x400m relay which ran second at the Athens Olympics - there comes a new generation of 400m sprinters.
They include NSW Central Coast training partners Kevin Moore and Matt Lynch, and WA’s Ben Offereins but are currently led by Sydney’s Steven Solomon, 18, who as a schoolboy last year won the Australian Open championship in 45.5sec.
It is up to them to find a way to pierce Steffensen’s armour, perhaps by tapping his vanity and breaking his rhythm. Easier said than done.
Solomon, who tallied 95 for his UAI (not including bonus points for being an elite sportsman), will follow fellow South Africa-born Steffensen to California after the Olympics. Solomon will study pre-medicine most likely at Stanford (and train with coach Edrick Floreal) although he has been offered a place at UCLA where John Smith, unfortunately, no longer coaches.
Solomon returned after a summer of injury for his first race only last weekend and finished a fast closing second (in 46.26) to Steffensen (46.11), also making his seasons debut, in Perth.
Solomon was 0.6sec behind Steffensen and Offereins (both 21.9sec) at halfway and even though Steffensen ran an ordinary 12.8sec last 100m it was good enough to hold out Solomon.
As a point of reference Darren Clark ran 11.7 for the final 100m in his national record (44.38sec) which still stands.
On Saturday they will all have to contend with 2011 US world championship 4x400m relay gold medallist Greg Nixon and Kenya’s 800m world record-holder David Rudisha who ran his personal best 400m (45.5) in Sydney two years ago. You want to see a fast finish, watch this Masai warrior.
