Renaldo Nehemiah’s 1981: A Season for the Ages
by Steve McGill

For the biography I’m writing on former hurdling great and current agent Renaldo Nehemiah, I recently finished the first draft of Chapter Six, which covers Nehemiah’s 1981 season, where he continued his dominance of the high hurdles, broke more records, and pretty much destroyed the opposition. Here are some of the topics I discuss in this pivotal chapter, where Renaldo cemented his legendary status by becoming the first hurdler ever to break the 13.00 barrier:

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1. Renaldo was the king of the Superstars competition — a made-for-TV event in which athletes from many sports (mainly professional football and baseball, but also sports like swimming, speed skating, boxing, and track) competed in a series of athletic challenges with the hope of winning prize money. The challenges included weightlifting, bowling, golf, 100m dash, 800m run, and an obstacle course as the final competition of the two-day event. On the strength of his performance in half-mile, Renaldo won the competition and earned close to $40,000 for his efforts. However, because of amateur rules back then, none of the money went into his bank account. Instead, the total amount went into a trust fund owned by The Athletics Congress — the governing body of track and field in the United States at the time, prior to the formation of USA Track & Field. Renaldo could only access the money after sending in receipts verifying his expenses for travel, training, etc. As for the Superstars competition itself, winning it turned many eyes in his direction, making many people realize that this “track guy” was an incredible athlete. Though Superstars was kind of “just for fun,” as it took place on the beach in Biscayne Bay, Fl, it was serious because there was money involved, and all the athletes wanted to win. Here’s Renaldo’s 800m run from that year’s competition:
   
2. Renaldo officially broke the 13.00 barrier in Zurich on August 19, 1981, but he had broken 13.00 unofficially the previous year in Jamaica (as mentioned in last month’s Nehemiah article), and then again in 1981, at the Sports Festival in Syracuse, NY. The Sports Festival, which no longer exists, was a sort of Olympic preview type of competition, as it featured all the major amateur sports. Here, through a steady rain, and in front of ABC cameras televising the event nationally on a weekly sports special called The Wide World of Sports, Renaldo ran 12.86, but the time was changed by the officials, just like in Jamaica the previous year, because they didn’t think anyone could run that fast. As I learned in a follow-up interview with Tonie Campbell, the automatic timing system back then was very unreliable. It often malfunctioned, the photo in the photo finish was often indiscernible, and back-up hand-timers were always in place. Coaching guru Wilbur Ross, who was coaching Renaldo at the time, screamed at the officials after the race, raging at the fact that a world record had been snatched from his protege.
3. The story of Renaldo and Ross getting together was one of the most fun parts of the story to write about. In my college years and in my early coaching years, the two greatest influences on my approach to hurdling and training for the hurdles were Renaldo’s high school coach, Jean Poquette, and The Hurdler’s Bible, penned by Ross. So learning about the summer of 1981, when Ross coached Renaldo, was like learning about two tremendously influential figures in my hurdling and hurdle-coaching world. Never having known or met Ross personally, I was surprised to discover that he was a bit of an egomaniac who rubbed many people the wrong way. Renaldo lived with him that summer, and Ross was like a drill sergeant. In a way, that’s what Renaldo needed, because he had been winning so often that he had lost his edge when it came to training. Ross had him do some super-duper demanding workouts. One was a version of the well-known zone drill that Ross himself had created. In this version of it, Renaldo did the workout on the street outside of Ross’ home. He sprinted over the first four hurdles, continued sprinting through the zone where hurdles 5-7 would’ve been, then finished by sprinting over hurdles 8-10 and through a finish line, on the street, on a slight downhill! That workout is insane on a soft, rubberized track. To do it on concrete is almost unfathomable, but that’s what Renaldo did. 
4. Ross wasn’t there for Renaldo’s 12.93 world record race at the Weltklasse meet in Zurich. At the last minute, when Renaldo was about to head to the airport to catch the plane, Ross called to inform him he wouldn’t be making the trip. When Renaldo, angry and confused, asked why, Ross simply said that he couldn’t make it. Renaldo ended up missing his flight while arguing with Ross over the phone (there were no cell phones back then, only wall phones), and had to catch a flight the next day, which put him in Zurich on the morning of the meet. In the race, he was running on pure anger. He was alone, without a coach, and he was determined to prove that he could win by himself, that he could beat rival Greg Foster by himself. If you watch that race closely, you’ll notice that Renaldo’s technique wasn’t the best it had ever been. But he was running so aggressively that the aggression compensated for any technical mistakes. Here’s video of that race:
   
5. What many people don’t remember about that 1981 season is that, after the 12.93 race, Renaldo ran three more sub-13.10’s in that same month of August. He followed the 12.93 with a 13.04, 13.07, and another 13.04. Such a string of races would be quite impressive even today. In 1981 it was phenomenal.

Overall, Renaldo’s 1981 season not only improved upon an astounding 1979 in which he twice broke the 110h world record, but it set the standard of excellence in the event that exists to the present day. To run sub-13 is still a benchmark reserved only for the super-elite. And as Renaldo told me himself, he’s not surprised that sub-13’s haven’t become more common, as running that fast is very hard to do without crashing. Though the average elite-level hurdler now runs much faster times than the average elite-level hurdler back then, Renaldo was not the average. Were he running today on modern surfaces, there’s no question he would be running sub-13 consistently.

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