Spearmon takes it to the next level - IAAF Magazine
Monday 5 February 2007
World silver medallist Wallace Spearmon waited until his last race of the season to blast to 19.65, the third all-time best performance. The 22-year-old American also took the 4x400m World Indoor title and ran an amazing 5 times 19.90 or under outdoors.
By Bob Ramsak
At the post-race press conference in Stuttgart after the 200 metres at the World Athletics Final, Wallace Spearmon sat patiently, mostly watching and listening as his training partner Tyson Gay was the focus of attention. Gay had just lowered his personal best to 19.68 seconds to equal Frank Fredericks as the third fastest man ever over the half-lap distance. Spearmon too produced a career best of 19.88 to finish a distant second in the race, and vowed that after an off-peak 2006 season, that he’d be back in 2007. As the reigning World Championships silver medallist, Spearmon’s proclamation hardly seemed a brash boast.
But Spearmon didn’t wait until “next year” to prove his point. Just 18 days later in Daegu, South Korea, Spearmon produced a dazzling display of his own with his 19.65 victory to jump ahead of his training partner and take sole ownership of the No. 3 spot on the all-time list.
Spearmon was pleased with his performance and not a bit surprised, but said that he had little idea of how fast he had actually run in his season-capping race.
“It felt slow,” he admitted bluntly. “When I was warming up I felt heavy and sluggish. And over the first couple of steps I stumbled. I didn’t know or feel that I was running that fast.”
But Spearmon has been running quite fast for several seasons now, a track record all the more remarkable for the fact that he didn’t celebrate his 22nd birthday until Christmas Eve.
Like many American schoolboys with athletic aspirations, early on Spearmon wanted to play football and basketball, and didn’t turn to track until his third year at Fayetteville High School in Arkansas. “Track came to me,” he remembers.
His father, Wallace Spearmon, Sr, was a standout sprinter, and the younger Spearmon fondly remembers attending his father’s training sessions.
“He didn’t force it on me. But I would go and watch him practice, and sometimes setting up my blocks and just run with him. So I had a great understanding and knowledge of the sport when I began in high school.”
He earned all-state honours in the 100m, 200m, and 400m, and the long, triple and high jumps, and even took a stab at the Decathlon and 300 metre Hurdles before heading to the University of Arkansas. There he made an immediate impact. At just 19, Spearmon captured the 2004 NCAA outdoor 200 metre title to cap his first collegiate season as a major national force, and followed up just as briskly to emerge as a key international player in 2005.
He twice lowered the national indoor 200 metre record at the 2005 NCAA indoor Championships, first to 20.21 in the semi-finals and again to 20.10 in the final. After successfully defending his collegiate outdoor title with a 19.91 scorcher, it didn’t come as a big surprise when he decided to bypass the remainder of his collegiate eligibility and join the professional ranks.
Although he was fourth at the US Championships later that June, he was given a team spot for the World Championships after Olympic champion Shawn Crawford was forced to withdraw from the squad with an injury. Prepping for Helsinki, Spearmon improved his personal best to 19.89 in London - the year’s fastest performance - and in the Finnish capital he showed that his promotion was a well-earned one, taking the silver medal within the US 1-4 sweep. A few weeks later he capped his long season with a third place finish at the World Athletics Final.
Despite the high expectations he and others may have set, Spearmon’s 2006 campaign was hardly uneventful, despite being overshadowed by Gay’s banner season.
Indoors, his highlights included a 31.88 World Indoor best for 300 metres at home in Fayetteville and a leg on the winning 4x400m relay quartet at the World Indoor Championships in Moscow.
After opening his outdoor season with a perfect three-for-three showing in the major US meetings in Carson, Eugene and New York, Spearmon claimed the US title in 19.90, his first sub-20 clocking of the season, and just a tick shy of his 19.89 personal best from London in 2005. He equalled that performance in Lausanne a few weeks later, though trailing Xavier Carter’s stunning 19.63, to finish fourth.
He won again in Stockholm, finished third in London behind Gay and Carter, and was third at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels. A week after his personal best in Stuttgart, he reclaimed some of the spotlight with a victory at the World Cup in Athens where he again lowered his best, this time to 19.87.
“Both of those races were hard,” he said of his Stuttgart and Athens outings. “I had to work to run that fast. It seemed that I was running too hard. But my coach told me that after building that consistency that I was ready to drop my time.”
That he did significantly in Daegu.
“I was trying to act as though I wasn’t excited,” he said, smiling. “But I was. Before the race, Tyson [Gay] was trying to get me motivated. He said I was ready to run 19.6.”
He considers Gay, his former team-mate at Arkansas, a good friend, and believes that their training and competitive relationship is something that they both feed off of.
“We’re both very competitive. We’re friends off the track and arch rivals on the track. And it’s good to train together, to see where he’s at, and he can see where I’m at.” And, he adds, the atmosphere is motivating for both. “If I see him doing something a little bit extra, I’ll do the same. And he’s the same way.”
Of less note to others - but not to him - were his improvements this year at his secondary distances. His first series of serious outings in the 400m resulted in a 45.22 best, and in the 100m, his pre-season best of 10.35 was shattered on two occasions: first in the US-Russia match in Moscow to 10.18, then again to 10.11 at the Golden Grand Prix in Shanghai. The latter he said, was his personal highlight for the season. He confirmed though that he has no intentions of moving up or down in distance as a specialty.
“I want to be a 200 runner that can also run the 100 and 400.”
Spearmon appreciates the newly-sparked interest in his event this year, and with Gay and Carter already in 19.6 territory, and a few others on the verge, he equally appreciates the prospects that an assault on Johnson’s legendary 19.32 dash into immortality a decade ago could be in the offing. But it’s also a performance that he holds with the utmost respect.
“19.3. That’s, that’s just…” he says, before his voice trails off. “I watch it on my computer before almost every race. But anything is possible. But that would be the day! But if I ran that fast, Tyson and the others would run that same time.”
He also realizes that his event is currently blessed with unprecedented depth and is thrilled at the prospect of being part of what may be a historic era for the half lap race.
“You have four true competitors who really don’t like to lose,” he said, referring to Gay, Carter, Jamaica’s World junior record holder Usain Bolt, and himself. “And are blessed with great God-given talent. I look at that and wonder what we’ll do next year.”
To underscore his point, Spearmon explains: “This year, Tyson focused on the 100, I had a break in my season, Xavier played football last fall so he didn’t do any base training, and Usain was hurt. If we’re all healthy and have a focused year, we’re going to have some really close fast races. No one wants to lose.”
Besides the proverbial alignment of stars, there are many variables that will have to converge to mount a realistic assault on Johnson’s mark, Spearmon says.
“The weather, the timing, the setting. Tyson, Xavier, and Usain, we’d all have to be in top shape. And maybe a nice tailwind.” In a race like that, Spearmon says, “Maybe one or two of us could break the record. Maybe three or four.”
An obvious goal for Spearmon will be to improve upon his runner-up finish from Helsinki, but he knows that his first major challenge of the season will be to get past the rigourous US selection process.
“One or two college guys always step up,” he says, before he begins to list other potential threats. “Last year it was Jordan Vaden. I wasn’t watching for him and he ran well. Since he’ll have a bye [in the 400], Jeremy [Wariner] will probably run. Then there’s [Olympic champion] Shawn Crawford, and Kelly Willie’s been running well. Anybody can really step up. You never know.”
Published in 2006 Yearbook