Onward with Renaldo

by Steve McGill

While most of us have found ourselves with plenty of downtime to occupy while being quarantined in our homes during this strange and scary era of human history, I haven’t found myself to be less busy than before. As a private coach, I only coach on the weekends anyway, and most of that is on Sundays since meets are on Saturdays. Meanwhile, the school where i teach has transitioned to online learning, which means I’m still grading papers and quizzes and teaching classes for a good chunk of the day. However, the one thing that being home so much has given me more time for is writing. Specifically, the biography I’m writing on legendary hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah. I have completed the first draft of the first chapter of the book, and should be able to finish the second chapter by the end of this month. This article will discuss my progress on the book, and I will share some interesting facts about Nehemiah that will be discussed in the book.

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Writing a book is a lot of work bruh. People who know I write will often tell me they’d love to write their life story, or a novel, or maybe a motivational book, and I usually don’t know how to respond. I want to say, “No you don’t,” but I’ll usually say something somewhat encouraging like, “Put an outline together and then take it from there.” But saying you want to write a book is no different than saying you want to run a marathon or you want to become a professional musician. You have to have a plan, and a willingness to grind through the tough times, because they’re going to come. My challenge has been, simply, finding time to conduct interviews and to write on a regular basis in the midst of everything else I got going on, namely teaching English to high schoolers.

But it’s coming along. Once school ends in late May, I’ll have the summer months to cover a lot of ground, which would put me in good position to finish a complete draft of the entire book by the end of this calendar year (which is my goal).

Thus far I’ve interviewed some really cool people, and it’s getting to the point where I feel I know Renaldo very well. The last biography I wrote, about Rodney Milburn, was a much different experience, because Rodney was already deceased by the time I had started working on the book. With Renaldo, I can always text him or email him with follow-up questions, and the other people I interview remain very close to him and keep in touch with him often. When Renaldo and I talked last year, during the beginning stages of this project, we both agreed that we wanted this book to be more than a sports biography, more than a page-turner. We wanted it to have layers, and that’s what I keep in my mind when I conduct interviews and when I sit down to write. I want people to know Renaldo, the human being, not just Skeets the world-record-breaking hurdling phenom who also played professional football long enough to earn a Super Bowl ring with the San Francisco 49ers.

Some of the people I’ve interviewed so far include Justin Gatlin, Harvey Glance, Tonie Campbell, and Perdita Felicien, in addition to several family members and many friends. Gatlin, as you most probably already know, is one of the greatest sprinters in history, in addition to being one of the sport’s most controversial figures due to two drug offenses. Nehemiah has worked as Gatlin’s agent for all but the first few months of Gatlin’s professional career. Their bond is a special one. Glance is another legendary sprinter. He and Nehemiah were contemporaries during the late 70s, and they remain friends to this day who play golf together whenever the opportunity allows.

Felicien, the 2003 world champion in the 100m hurdles, is another former client of Renaldo the agent. Tonie Campbell was one of Nehemiah’s hurdling rivals back in the 70s, and then again in the 80s (after Nehemiah returned to the track circuit following four years with the 49ers). They remain close friends to this day as well.

I also had a long, deeply philosophical interview with former 49er teammate Charles Young, who played tight end for the team during Nehemiah’s first year there. Young, an ordained minister, emphasized Renaldo’s personal gifts, not his athletic gifts, when we talked. I’m hoping to interview a few other 49ers from that era, as well as Nehemiah’s main hurdling rival from back in the day, Greg Foster. As you may know, Foster recently had a successful heart transplant surgery, so I don’t know if he’ll be willing and able to talk.

Here are some interesting things I’ve learned about Nehemiah this far:

1. His mother died when he was 14 years old. As the oldest of three siblings, he had to take on the role of mother for his younger brother and sister. He and his mother were very close, so the loss was devastating, and it still pains him to talk about it. She died of lung and breast cancer. She was 37.

2. Nehemiah is an amazingly skilled bowler. His highest score is 286, and he bowls in the 200s regularly, and with ease. He knows how to put spin on the ball like professionals do, and has his own ball.

3. He took tae kwon do classes and gymnastics in his youth.

4. The father who raised him and gave him his last name is not his biological father. He didn’t find this out until he was in his thirties.

5. Both of Renaldo’s parents were very religious and served as deacons in the Baptist church that he attended. Renaldo’s faith lies at the core of his existence.

6. Despite being the greatest hurdler of his era and arguably the greatest ever, he never won an Olympic medal, or even competed in an Olympic Games. 1980 would have been his year, but that was the year the US boycotted. After that, he quit track (which was strictly an amateur sport at the time) to pursue a career in professional football.

There are more tidbits, but that’s all I’ll share for now. All of the items listed above will be discussed thoroughly in the book. In next month’s issue, I’ll also talk in detail about his hurdling technique, as a track fan in England sent me a video collection of just about every race Nehemiah ran from 1978 to the indoor season of 1982. After watching that video, which featured many races I had never seen before, I became convinced that Nehemiah is indeed the greatest 110 meter man of all time. But again, the book is as much about the man as it is about the athlete. In the coming months, I’ll continue to keep you posted on my progress.

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