Dalilah Muhammad’s Amazing Career
by Savannah Cress
Dalilah Muhammad has been racing in one form or another since very early childhood. As a young girl, she could often be found organizing informal races with other kids in her Queens, NY neighborhood. The coach for a local track club witnessed one such race and made it a point to locate her parents and persuade them to bring her to his practices. They obliged, and Muhammad’s trek to greatness began.
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She was just 7 years old when she entered her first official track meet, which was held in the Bronx. Her event was the 300-meter run, and her inaugural race was a far cry from her more recent ones. Muhammad flat out lost. A true hurdler, even before one ever sat in her lane, Muhammad wasn’t as bothered by the fact that she lost as she was by the fact that she hadn’t figured out why. What were the other girls in the race doing differently to make them faster? She wanted to understand. Given that brief thought process in Muhammad’s 7-year-old mind, it’s not surprising she eventually found her way to the 400-meter hurdle race, arguably the event’s most demanding event, both physically and mentally. [1] [2]
Before she graduated, in 2008 from Cardozo High School in Queens, Muhammad won the New York State as well as the Nike Outdoor Nationals titles in the 400 meter hurdles. She also took the gold medal at the 2007 IAAF World Youth Championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic and was named New York State’s 2007 Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year. After high school, Muhammad went on to study business at the University of Southern California, where she ran on the USC Trojans track team. In her first collegiate season, she set PR’s in both the 100 meter and 400 meter hurdles. The 100-meter PR of 13.79 came at the Pacific-10 Conference meet, where she also came in 2nd for the 400h and 4th in the 4 x 400-meter relay. Then at the NCAA Outdoor Championship meet, she set her 400h PR of 56.49 seconds, placing 3rd in the finals. In Muhammad’s 3rd season at USC, she lowered her 400h PR to 56.04, and by the time she graduated in 2012, she was a four-time NCAA All-American and was the 3rd fastest women’s 400-meter hurdler in USC’s entire history. [3] [4] [5] [8]
After college, Muhammad turned professional and honed in on the 400 meter race. Coached by Yolanda Demus, and training with Demus’ then American-record-holding daughter Lashinda Demus, Muhammad had a startlingly strong opening to her professional career. Her first four races of the season were PRs, bringing her best time from 56.04 down to 54.66. From there, she continued to improve and wrapped up the season by winning the 2013 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championship title in Iowa, then going on to place 2nd in the World Championships in Moscow the following August. [5] [6] [7]
Unfortunately, the two years that followed were not quite as smooth. After starting her career with a season of PRs and gaining the sponsorship of Nike, Muhammad felt the pressure to keep that momentum going. In her words: “After improving so much that year, I kind of thought, ‘Well, this is my best – how much better can I get after such a big improvement like this?’ It’s hard to know how much further you can push yourself.” That pressure seemed to briefly mess with her mindset. Muhammad’s 2014 season 400h times were rather pedestrian compared to her opening-season times. She didn’t run under 58.0 all season–a huge disappointment. Muhammad’s 2015 season started out with more promise. She won the Oxy Invitational, running a 55.76, which was more on par with her 2013 season. Soon after that meet, however, Muhammad noticed pain in her quad progressively growing worse. Within two weeks, the pain was unbearable, forcing her to stop competing and turn her attention to recovering. When her body was healed enough to resume competition, Muhammad was back at it, though having lost too much time with injury to fully get back into her stride. [7]
Just before the 2016 season, Muhammad made the decision to leave Yolanda Demus and train with Coach Lawrence Johnson, alongside 100m hurdlers Kristi Castlin and Brianna Rollins. Coach Johnson had showed interest in Muhammad when she was in high school and he was coaching at Virginia Tech. Though at the time she opted to venture to the west coast to USC, Muhammad kept her eyes on Coach Johnson and the impressive growth of his athletes. When she decided she needed a change of training approach, his was the first name that came to her mind. Coach Johnson’s speed-focused methods bode well for Muhammad’s development as an athlete. Through his coaching, she became a more confident, focused, skillfully-executing, and yes, even faster, competitor. Through the season, Muhammad achieved one of her childhood dreams and qualified for the Olympic team. At the 2016 Olympic Trials in Eugene Oregon, Muhammad won every 400h heat she ran and set a trials record, which was also a new PR, of 52.88 in the finals. This domination foreshadowed what was to come at the Olympic games in Rio. Muhammad blasted out of the blocks and did not let up until she crossed the finish line to claim the title in 53.13, with several strides between her and the rest of the pack. It was the first time an American had ever won gold in the women’s 400h. [7] [9] [10] [11] [12]
The following season, Muhammad defended her US title in the 2017 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships held in Sacramento, California. This win came with a new PR of 52.64. But 2018 brought a bit of an “off-year” for Muhammad. She won three out of the seven Diamond League meets in which she ran, a much lower ratio than usual. Her best time during this season was 53.65, considerably less aggressive than the previous few seasons. She and Coach Johnson regrouped to revamp her training plan after the disappointing season. They focused hard on strength and foundational training the fall before the 2019 season. That training paid off, and the entire world saw just how much in July at the US Outdoor Championships in Drake Stadium, Des Moines, Iowa. Despite a slower-than-usual reaction to the starting gun, Muhammad ran a smart race and crossed the finish line in a world record time of 52.20 seconds. This time beat the time of previous world record holder of 16 years, Yuliya Pechonkina, by .14 seconds.
As summer faded to fall and the focus turned to the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, all eyes were on Muhammad and first-year pro Sydney McLaughlin, who had beaten the world record holder in a couple of Diamond League races earlier that season. But Muhammad was a different athlete than she was in 2014. She remained focused under the pressure of being chased by the 20-year-old prodigy. She had a solid start and maintained a lead for most of the race. When the less experienced McLaughlin faltered ever so slightly at the 8th hurdle, Muhammad turned it up and powered to the finish line to set a new world record of 52.16, beating her own previous world record by .04 of a second. [2] [5] [13]
The professional hurdling career of Dalilah Muhammad has been astounding to watch. She has ridden out the inevitable ebbs and flows over the past seven years and accomplished enough that a case can easily be made for her being the greatest female 400 meter hurdler ever. Since the women’s 400h was introduced, Muhammad is only the 2nd athlete in the entire history of the sport, after Sally Gunnell, to have both won the Olympic title and achieved a world record time. Even after her huge successes last season, Muhammad doesn’t feel like she’s given the sport all she can. She still has big goals; she’s not finished yet. Muhammad would like to be the first woman to break 52 seconds in the 400h, thereby setting yet another world record. With her combination of athletic skill, cognitive ability, and raw determination, my money says she’ll do it. [1] [5]
Resources:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/sports/Dalilah-Muhammad-track.html
[2] https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2019-10-18/dalilah-muhammad-feature
[3] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benjamin_N._Cardozo_High_School
[4] https://www.teamusa.org/usa-track-and-field/athletes/Dalilah-Muhammad
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalilah_Muhammad
[6] https://worldathletics.org/athletes/united-states/dalilah-muhammad-219379
[7]http://featured.flosports.tv/dalilah-muhammad-overcomes-obstacles-to-become-favorite-for-gold
[8]https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/usctrojans.com/documents/2019/12/5/Women_s_Top_10.pdf
[9] https://qns.com/story/2016/07/14/cardozo-alums-are-heading-to-the-olympics-in-rio/.
[10] https://trackandfieldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2016.pdf
[11]https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/video/detail/women-s-400m-hurdles-final-rio-2016-replays/
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