Wariner for Oz?

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Wariner may race in Australia
By Jenny McAsey

December 06, 2007 THE man on target to be the next 400m world record-holder, Olympic and world champion Jeremy Wariner, wants to compete in Australia in February, joining 100m world record-holder Asafa Powell.

Texan Wariner, whose mentor and manager is 200m and 400m world record-holder Michael Johnson, has never been to Australia and is keen to add a visit to his pre-Olympic preparation.

If it comes off, to have Wariner and Powell racing at A-Series meets in Sydney and Melbourne would be a tremendous coup for Athletics Australia. It may also encourage Australia’s fastest 400m runner, John Steffensen, to reconsider not wanting to run in the domestic season.

Steffensen believes racing in February will cost him at the Olympics, but if it is good enough for Wariner, the 2004 Olympic 400m champion and 2005 and 2007 world champion, then it may prompt a change of heart.

Wariner’s agent, Deon Minor, said yesterday from Texas that the Olympic and dual world 400m champion was considering racing in Sydney on February 16 and Melbourne five days later.

A final decision will be made after Wariner consults his coach, track guru Clyde Hart, who guided Johnson to two world records and three individual Olympic gold medals.

“Jeremy has never been down there so we would like to try to come and take a look at everything,” Minor said. "Australia is one of the places he wants to go to compete and see a bit of the country.

“It is looking pretty good from my end and Michael (Johnson) was OK with it. Now it is up to Jeremy and coach Hart to decide and let me know one way or the other what they are going to do.”

Minor said they had been negotiating closely with Athletics Australia’s international liaison manager, Maurie Plant, and would let him know if Wariner would race.

Wariner, 23, has been touted as the next 400m world record-holder by no lesser expert than Johnson, who holds the record of 43.18sec, set in 1999.

The one obstacle in the Australian plan is Wariner does not normally race in February. “If he does come, it will be the first time he has left the country (US) this early to go and compete, and his coach is not sure about that,” Minor said.

“Jeremy does not usually start racing until the end of March, so they have to look at whether he would be ready to run.”

Australian Daniel Batman said it would be exciting to run against Wariner if he does make the trip. Batman is one of Australia’s most versatile runners, and is ranked in the top 10 national all-time list over 100m, 200m and 400m.

Batman had burnout this year and took several months away from the sport.

However, he has been training solidly for the past few months and will return to racing over 400m at the Zatopek Classic in Melbourne next Thursday.

Batman has been training in Canberra with Clinton Hill, who anchored the Australian relay team to an Olympic silver medal at the 2004 Athens Games.

Hill has finally recovered from a long-term foot injury and will also resume racing in Melbourne next week.

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Looks like it is happening

World, Olympic 400m champ to race in Australia

December 6, 2007 - 3:45PM

World and Olympic 400m champion Jeremey Wariner will race in Australia next year.

American Wariner will join the world’s fastest man, Asafa Powell, in racing and training in Australia early next year.

Athletics Australia said today Wariner will compete over 200m at the Sydney grand prix event on February 16 and then over his pet 400m distance at the IAAF world athletics tour meet in Melbourne on February 21.

World 100m record holder Powell has committed to running at the IAAF event in Melbourne.

Wariner, 23, has claimed two world titles, an Olympic gold and is the third fastest ever over 400m.

“I am looking forward to running in Australia … it will be my first time visiting the country,” Wariner said in a statement today.

Wariner’s 400m personal best is 43.45s, shy of the 43.18s world record mark set by his manager, Michael Johnson.

AAP

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Ohhh, I’m so looking forward to this summer of Aussie Athletics!!! I wonder if they’ll have a 400m race in Sydney at all, seeing as Wariner will run the 200m only at that meet. Its so exciting though!!

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Jumper,

to make it square when JW is in Melbourne we will play some old B.Dugme music to encourage him run even faster :slight_smile:

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I understand Darold Williamson will race 400 in the first Aussie meet and 200m in the second, the opposite to Wariner’s schedule. Maybe Hart doesn’t want them to meet yet.
BY the way there’s a good picture by Victor Saylor of Williamson handing over to Wariner to anchor the Osaka 4x4 in the world champs issue of T&FNews magazine.

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http://www.iaaf.org/GP07/news/kind=2/newsid=42612.html#coach+hart+confident+about+wariners+australian+plans+iaaf+world+athletics+tour

Coach Hart confident about Wariner’s Australian plans – IAAF World Athletics Tour
Thursday 6 December 2007
Sydney, Australia - The prospect of training in the Australian summer and picking up some outdoor races on the Australian circuit at the start of 2008 has enticed Jeremy Wariner to join Asafa Powell on the starting list for the IAAF World Athletics Tour meeting in Melbourne, Australia on 21 February.

World 100m record holder Powell announced last week – click here – that he would train and compete in Australia during their summer, and now World and Olympic 400m champion Wariner will also set up a training camps in Melbourne and will pop up north to Sydney for a tune-up meet on 16 February at Homebush.

Coach Clyde Hart with his pupil, World and Olympic champion Jeremy Wariner
(Baylor University Sports Information)

No great deviation to normal preparations

Wariner’s coach Clyde Hart, who guided Michael Johnson to the 200m and 400m World records as well as World and Olympic titles, said racing at that time of year held no fears for his current Olympic champion who he is preparing for a 400m title defence in Beijing in August.

“I don’t think that it’s a problem if Jeremy wants to run in February because he has done that to a much greater degree and won the Olympics off it in 2004 and he ran probably six indoor meets and one of those was the NCAA championships when he won both the 400m and ran on a relay,” said Hart speaking from the Baylor University track at Waco, Texas.

Jeremy Wariner - 43.45 in Osaka
(Getty Images)

“He ran a lot of races that year prior to the Olympics so this is a very short schedule compared to that.”

“So this is not any great deviation. We just in the last couple of years haven’t done any indoor competition. But since this is outdoors and the weather should be nice and warm that’s no reason we need be concerned.”

“We’re just opposed to running indoors because it takes a lot of different strain running on a small track. Outdoors I don’t see any problem if we can get the training in - and the weather’s been good so far.”

Jeremy Wariner (USA)
(Getty Images)

Wariner, 23, lines-up in the 200m in the Sydney Grand Prix and has nominated for the 400m at the World Athletics Tour meet in Melbourne. His training partner Darold Williamson, 24, will compete over 400m in Sydney and 200m in Melbourne.

The Melbourne meeting is the second leg of the 2008 World Athletics Tour which culminates at the IAAF / VTB Bank World Athletics Final, Stuttgart, Germany, 13-14 September 2008, as the meeting in Shanghai, China (28 Sep 2007) which followed a week after this year’s Final began the points scoring opportunities for the 2008 Tour.

Wariner and Williamson were both part of the US team who won the 4x400m relay at the Osaka World championships last August, Williamson (who split 44.32) handing off to Wariner who anchored in a stunning 43.10.

Jeremy Wariner, Darold Williamson, Angelo Taylor and LaShawn Merritt celebrate the 4x400m relay gold
(Getty Images)

“I am looking forward to running in Australia in February. It will be my first time visiting the country down under. I am excited about competing here for the first time as I prepare for the summer Olympics in Beijing,” Wariner was quoted in an Australian Athletics announcement today.

With current world recordholder Michael Johnson as his track agent and Hart coaching him, Wariner whose 43.45 second victory in Osaka (31 August) makes him the third fastest in history, seems destined to break Johnson’s 400m record of 43.18.

Set for sub-45 in Australia

Jeremy Wariner takes the baton from Darold Williamson in the men’s 4x400m relay
(Getty Images)

“We’re not going to accelerate Jeremy’s training because he’s racing in Australia,” added Hart, mindful of the Olympic challenge further on down the track.

“He’s just going to run off of whatever training he has. How sharp he’ll be, we’ll just have to wait and see, but I don’t feel like it will be much of a problem.”

“I think Jeremy, if he’s in shape and ready, will always be under 45sec.”

Clyde Hart in his office with paintings of his famous pupils Wariner and Johnson
(Getty Images)

“It just depends on where we want to be and how much training we can fit in to that point of time in February. We’re certainly not going over there just to do a workout. That would be ridiculous.”

“We’re going to train, try to get some warm weather but I also think the competition needs to be something that he can get something out of it.”

That may depend to some degree on how Australia’s “silver bullets” 4x400m Athens Olympic relay squad comes up, especially the Commonwealth Games champion John Steffensen.

Despite clocking back-to-back sub-45sec times, Steffensen missed the Osaka individual 400m final by one place. He struggled throughout 2007 with back-related hamstring problems in both legs but has been training well in Sydney.

If Steffensen was surprised Wariner would be competing in Australia he didn’t let on, saying only: “That’s good. I’m just trying to get ready day by day. Training is going good, so I can’t complain at the moment.”

Mike Hurst - The Daily Telegraph in Sydney - for the IAAF

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Darold and Wariner are in different camps now and only occasionally train together, i belive.

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Darold wanted more of Hart’s time but the coach doesn’t give too much attention to lazy guys, albeit phenomenally talented ones, so Darold took himself off to work with the new head coach at Baylor and made another relay team for Osaka. So now he’s going to do a lot more work with old Clyde even though he will apparently stay with the head coach. That’s what I’m led to understand.:wink:

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i thought he’d moved to DFW and left baylor completely by the end of last season, but i’ll take your word for it by a fair margin over mine.

but the new head guy at baylor is a former miler, albeit one who ran for Baylor, so i’m not sure how that’ll work out in comparison with the master, clyde hart.

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Well, it seems that some accommodation has been arrived at because both guys are definitely going to do more training together for 2008 and they are listed to be going to Australia as some kind of package pair. I suppose we’ll eventually hear something more definitive but Darold is a super talent for sure and still only 24. That’s an age a lot of guys are making it to their first major meet. But he should be more than a relay runner (albiet he was seventh in Helsinki 05, that’s still how he’s regarded at the moment on the Euro tour).

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Darold is certaintly a super 400 guy and it would be intresting to see him take a more speed based approach, or some of the faster guys like Merritt come over to a more endurance based program.

Best of luck to him in this olympic year, hopefully he isn’t off chasing money in Europe or doing anything else that one would classify as negitive when he should be preping for the trials, regardless of who’s coaching him.

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I cant understand that if they havent raced this early or tried this type of thing before, why are they doing it now? It is an olympic year why mess with what has been working for them, obviously hes come into the major meets ready to run. It just seems odd to switch from what has been working.

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They did it in '04 when both athletes were in college and made the Olympic team.

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Certainly Wariner won the NCAA Indoors (where he doubled in the 400 and relay) in early 2004, then ran the full NCAA outdoor season, then Europe, then the Olympics.

In the iaaf report posted earlier in this thread, Wariner’s coach Clyde Hart specifically addressed your well-stated concerns.

[i]“I don’t think that it’s a problem if Jeremy wants to run in February because he has done that to a much greater degree and won the Olympics off it in 2004 and he ran probably six indoor meets and one of those was the NCAA championships when he won both the 400m and ran on a relay,” said Hart speaking from the Baylor University track at Waco, Texas.

“He ran a lot of races that year prior to the Olympics so this is a very short schedule compared to that.”

“So this is not any great deviation. We just in the last couple of years haven’t done any indoor competition. But since this is outdoors and the weather should be nice and warm that’s no reason we need be concerned.”

“We’re just opposed to running indoors because it takes a lot of different strain running on a small track. Outdoors I don’t see any problem if we can get the training in - and the weather’s been good so far.”[/i]

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from the Athletics Australia website

06.12.2007
One lap wonder to race Down Under

The world’s best 400m runner, American Jeremy Wariner, will join the world’s fastest man Asafa Powell in racing and training in Australia this summer.

Wariner, the reigning world and Olympic 400m champion, will race over 200m at the Sydney Athletics Grand Prix (Saturday, February 16) and over his signature 400m event at the IAAF World Athletics Tour meeting in Melbourne (Thursday, February 21).

The 2008 World Athletics Tour opener will now feature two of the world’s biggest athletics stars racing in their pet events, with Powell likely to break 10 seconds over 100m and Wariner looking to crash through the 44 second barrier over 400m.

Unlike Powell, who raced to victory at the Commonwealth Games, Wariner will make his Australian debut, although both will race for the first time in Sydney.

“I am looking forward to running in Australia in February,” Wariner said from his training base in Texas. "It will be my first time visiting the country down under.

“I am excited about competing here for the first time as I prepare for the summer Olympics in Beijing.”

At just 23, Wariner has already collected two world titles and an Olympic gold medal and is the third fastest 400m runner in history.

The individual 400m champion from Athens 2004 and the 2005 and 2007 World Championships, Wariner set a new personal best of 43.45 in defending his world title in Osaka in August. He then led home the US 4 x 400m relay team to collect his third consecutive major championship gold in that event.

From Waco, Texas, his trademark is to wear sunglasses, sunny or not, and his smooth style has been likened to his mentor and manager, the peerless 400m world record holder Michael Johnson. While Johnson’s record is unsurpassed, Wariner is edging closer to the mark of 43.18 set by his mentor in winning the world title in Seville in 1999.

Wariner will be joined by his training partner, world and Olympic 4 x 400m relay gold medallist Darold Williamson, himself a 44.51 second one-lapper, who will run the 400m in both Sydney and Melbourne.

Williamson finished fourth in the 2004 US Olympic trials and is commencing his assault on an individual 400m berth in Beijing with his two races in Australia. He finished seventh (one place ahead of John Steffensen) in the 400m final at the Helsinki World Championships in 2005.

The duo are coached by the legendary Clyde Hart, who guided Michael Johnson to his two Olympic and nine World Championships successes and will join Wariner and Williamson in Australia.

The confirmation of Wariner and Williamson - along with Powell and his training group including World Championships 100m silver medallists Michael Frater (Jamaica) and Darrel Brown (Trinidad and Tobago) along with 2006 world No. 1 over 100m Sherone Simpson (Jamaica) - is a huge fillip to the Olympic preparations of Australia’s stars including World Championship semi-finalists Joshua Ross, Sean Wroe and Sally McLellan.

Athletics Australia’s international athlete liaison manager Maurie Plant, the man responsible for securing the visits of both Wariner and Powell, said the duo have both decided that Australia is the best place to begin their Beijing assault.

"Jeremy has the imprimatur of his manager and mentor Michael Johnson, who raced in Sydney in the summer of 1995 and of course won gold at the Sydney Olympics, and coach Hart is excited about opening their 2008 campaign down under.

“With Powell’s posse and now Wariner and Williamson, the Sydney and Melbourne meets are already shaping up as the best in our long history of staging world class athletics meetings in Australia.”

Tickets for the Sydney Athletics Grand Prix and the IAAF World Athletics Tour meet in Melbourne are on sale now from Ticketek outlets around Australia.

JEREMY WARINER
Age: 23
Born: January 31, 1984 in Irving, Texas
Event: 400m
PB: 200m - 20.19 (2006); 400m - 43.45 (2007)
Current residence: Waco, Texas
Coach: Clyde Hart

Career highlights: 2004 Olympic 400m and 4 x 400m relay gold medallist; 2-time World Outdoor 400m and 4 x 400m relay gold medallist (2005, 2007); 2-time USA Outdoor champion (2004, 2005); 2004 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor champion; 2006 Jesse Owens Award winner

DAROLD WILLIAMSON
Age: 24
Event: 400m
PB: 44.51 (2004)
Born: February 19, 1983 in San Antonio, Texas
Current residence: Waco, Texas
Coach: Michael Ford / Clyde Hart

Career highlights: 2-time World Outdoor 4 x 400m relay gold medallist (2005, 2007); 2004 Olympic 4 x 400m relay gold medallist; 2005 USA Outdoor 400m runner-up; 2005 NCAA Outdoor 400m champion; 2002 World Junior 400m champion; 2002 US junior 400m champion

Sydney Athletics Grand Prix
Saturday, February 16, 2007
Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre
Click here to purchase tickets

IAAF World Athletics Tour – Melbourne
Thursday, February 21, 2007
Melbourne Olympic Park
Click here to purchase tickets

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amazing to see that here in australia soooooooooo many still complain about having to peak and feb then again in august…

one of our best females, i wont say the event and her coach were saying the same to me the other day… “its stupid and to hard to have to run well in feb and again at the olympics”.

and no they did not attend the seminars last summer. but were invited

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the only concern one might legitimently have with them running too fast in OZ and then having to peak again for USA trials(or at least show up near top form) and then obviously try to peak again in Bejing(refering to Wariner and Williamson) is the fact that their season’s ended in August this year where as in '03 before the '04 season they finished up in early June.

Of course Wariner and Williamson are probably just looking to get some warm weather raceing in and a change of scenery for a bit, no real concern with running fast. It seems very unlikely that Wariner will push the 44 second barrier mentioned in the article, at least if he’s on track to run his fastest in Bejing.

The only thing that could potentally be a problem would be the intendent velocities of a 200 if the conditions somehow are bad, other than that, this seems to be a great opportunity for OZ to host some world level guys and grow the sport.

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You expect Wariner to be peaking when he races in oz?

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clyde hart doesn’t believe in peaking.

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I think that’s more a matter of semantics than reality.