Hurdle Doubling
In a Facebook hurdle group that I belong to, someone recently asked if any of us knew of any hurdlers who were successful at doubling in the 100/110m hurdles and the 400m hurdles at the collegiate or professional level. I commented that Andre Phillips had been a great double hurdler back in the 1980’s, having won an Olympic gold medal in the 400 hurdles in 1988. That same year, I believe, he finished fourth in the US Trials in the 110 hurdles, and had a personal best of 13.25 in that event. Another commenter mentioned that, more recently, Queen Harrison was an NCAA champion in both hurdling events and was specializing in the longer race as a professional before switching her focus to the 100 meter hurdles a few years ago. Then of course there is Keni Harrison, who won an NCAA title in the 100 hurdles last year and finished second to Shamier Little in the 400h less than an hour later. Whether she sticks with the 100 hurdles exclusively for the rest of her career remains to be seen.
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But no, doubling is becoming increasingly less and less common. Sprint hurdlers at the collegiate level are more apt to include the long jump, the 4×100 relay, and the open 100 or 200 to their repertoire, as opposed to the long hurdles. Meanwhile, long hurdlers are more apt to include the 4×400 relay and the open 400 or 800 as opposed to the sprint hurdles.
Why is doubling so uncommon? Obviously, the two hurdle races require different types of training. For the men, the raise in height from 39 to 42 from high school to college requires much technique work as well as strength work. Even for women, whose hurdles stay the same height, the speed factor increases significantly, which means less time to devote to the long hurdles. A good 400 hurdler’s training is going to mimic, to some degree, the training of a middle-distance runner – a half-miler or 1500m runner.
To find the time in the training regimen to train like a 100/110 hurdler and 400 hurdler isn’t easy. Yet, doubling is very common at the high school level, and even at the collegiate level there are plenty of hurdlers who do both, even if they have more success in one than the other. I think a lot of times it comes down to team needs, and recruiting methods that are based on team needs. A program that needs a 400 hurdler is not necessarily going to make that athlete run the sprint hurdles if there is already depth in that event. I think too that sometimes it comes down to working with an athlete’s strengths. I know I’m going back a ways for this one, but Rickey Harris was a national champion double hurdler in high school in the late 1990’s, but when he went to Florida State, he focused on the 400 hurdles. A 13.5 110 hurdler in high school not running the 110 hurdles in college? Well, his technique wasn’t all that great, and the raise in height was going to affect him a great deal, so it made sense for him to specialize in the longer race. My observation has been that many college coaches don’t really want to spend a lot of time with incoming hurdlers when it comes to fixing flaws in their technique. Most coaches prefer that the hurdlers come in already armed with solid technique, so all they need to work on is getting stronger and faster.
Schedule makers don’t help. As mentioned earlier, when Keni Harrison tried to double in both hurdle races at NCAA’s last year, the 400 hurdle final took place less than an hour after the 100m hurdle final. What kind of nonsense is that? It seems that the schedule makers assume that hurdlers won’t try to double. The same with the US Trials last month. Heading into 2016, Keni had been flirting with the idea of trying to make the team in both events, but once she saw the schedule, she knew she had to pick one. And when she opened with a 12.36 in the 100h, she knew that was the race to go with.
At the Olympic Games in Rio as well, the hurdle events are all bunched up on top of each other. No chance for a double. I guess it’ll take an athlete of Harrison’s stature to appeal for a favorable schedule one of these years before the schedule makers decide to order the events in such a way that allows for the possibility.
In the Facebook group thread, I brought up the fact that another hurdle race needs to be added to the program: a 200 meter hurdle race. My rationale is based on putting it in sprinter terms. How many sprinters do you know who double in the 100 and the 400 when you’re talking about major conference collegians and professionals? Doublers double in the 100 and the 200, or the 200 and 400. We need look no further than Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin for examples of the former, and LaShawn Merritt and Allyson Felix for examples of the latter. Even in years when Felix dabbled with the 100, she took a break from the 400 those years. Imagine asking Bolt or Gatlin to double in the 1 and the 4? That’s essentially what we’re asking hurdlers to do when we say they should double in the 100/110 and 400m hurdles.
Why not add a 200 meter hurdle event to the program? One commenter on the Facebook thread said it would be a good idea to start it out as an event in invitational meets, and I agree that that would be a good way to get it started. The way I see it, there’d be no need for major changes if such a race were added. The race could start at the same start line as the 200 meter sprint race, and the athletes would clear five hurdles – the last five hurdles of the 400h race, the same as the 13-14 year olds do in youth track.
For the men, the race height would be 39 inches – three inches lower than the 110 height, three inches higher than the 400h height. For the women the height would be trickier. My proposal would be to raise the 100h height to 36 inches, have the 200 hurdles at 33 inches, and keep the 400 hurdles at 30 inches.
Now, how exciting would that be! In the sprints, a Justin Gatlin and a LaShawn Merritt meet in the middle, at the 200. In the hurdles, we could have the same thing. The 200 meter hurdles is a thrilling event in youth track; why is it no longer run after the age of 14? It’s an event that combines the speed, power, and technique of the 100/110h with the speed-endurance and stride pattern challenges of the 400 hurdles. Who do I call to make this happen?
My vision, my dream, my fantasy is to host a hurdles only meet where we could include all kinds of funky hurdle races. But until that happens, let’s hope that in the future, the schedule makers of big meets will spread out the hurdle races so that those who do want to double in the sprint hurdles and the long hurdles can make a legitimate bid to do so.
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