Johnny Dutch: A Hurdler for Life

In the course of a coaching career, there are going to be a handful of athletes who help you to become not only a better coach, but a better human being. Such athletes are rare treasures, and their presence in your life enriches you and adds depth and meaning to your existence. I was fortunate to coach one such athlete for a three-year period from 2005-2007 – American 400 meter hurdler Johnny Dutch. The 25-year-old Dutch, born in Raleigh, NC, has been one of the top-ranked 400m hurdlers in the world for the past six years. In 2009 he made the USA World Championship team, and in 2010 he ran his current personal best of 47.63 at that year’s USA Outdoor Championships.

Most hurdlers begin hurdling sometime during their early high school years, and a few might start before that if they run age-group track. But Dutch was hurdling before he was even old enough to run the hurdles in youth track.

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As a nine-year-old boy, he would tag along to the practice sessions of his older sister Ashley, who was a state champion hurdler in North Carolina in 2001. Though Johnny would spend most of his time playing in the long jump pit while Ashley worked out over the hurdles, every now and then he’d jump some low hurdles himself.

Coached by Aaron McDougal throughout his formative years, Dutch went on to become a hurdling legend in youth track, breaking and setting age-group records and winning national championships as he moved up the ranks. By the time he entered high school, his family had moved from Raleigh to nearby Clayton, NC. At Clayton High School, Dutch continued to excel in the hurdling events. He won the North Carolina 3A state championship in the 110 and 300 meter hurdles in his freshman and sophomore years at Clayton. His freshman year, he tied the national freshman record in the 110 hurdles with a 14.16.

His junior year, Clayton moved up to 4A classification in NC, and Dutch continued his dominance. As a junior in 2006, he won the state championship in both hurdling events, in 13.55 and 36.60. He also won the 110’s at the Nike Outdoor National High School Championships in 13.54. (He won the 400h too, but was dq’ed for hooking a hurdle). The following year, he set a new indoor record in the 55 meter hurdles with a time of 7.17 at the NC State Championship meet. He also won the Nike Indoor championship in the 60 meter hurdles in 7.71.

Outdoors his senior year, Dutch won the 110’s at the NC state meet in a wind-aided 13.34. In the 300h, he was edged out by Spencer Adams (who has gone on to become an outstanding 110 hurdler at Clemson University) in a hotly contested battle in which Adams ran 36.04 to Dutch’s 36.09. At high school nationals a few weeks later, Dutch had a rough time as he hit the sixth hurdle and stumbled badly in the 400h, knocking him out of contention. In the 110’s he false started and had to watch as one of his club training partners, Wayne Davis II – a sophomore at the time – went on to claim victory in 13.65.

That summer he finished second to William Wynne of Georgia at the USA Outdoor Junior Championships, 49.70 to 50.07. Dutch got out to an early lead but was passed by Wynne on the run-in off the last hurdle. Dutch went on to win the Pan American Junior Championships in the 400 meter hurdles later that summer (Wynne didn’t compete) in 50.87. In the same meet, he won the 110’s in 13.47.

With a long list of hurdling accomplishments covering a span of nine years, Dutch was in high demand when it came time for college recruiters to come knocking. While he received tons of letters, the programs that showed the most interest were Baylor, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, and UCLA. Ultimately, after much deliberation, Dutch chose to join the Gamecocks of South Carolina, where he would be coached by Curtis Frye, who had coached Allen Johnson to Olympic gold and had also coached Terrence Trammell to two NCAA championships and Olympic silver. “I didn’t want to be too far from home,” Dutch explains, “and I wanted to go into the SEC. The program at South Carolina was phenomenal in the hurdles, and I was impressed by Coach Frye’s history as a great coach.”

At USC, Frye had Dutch continue to compete in both hurdle events, but he placed a greater emphasis on the longer race. “Coach Frye figured I was more successful at the beginning of the season with the 400 hurdles,” Dutch said, “so that became my focus the second half of every season. Coach Frye was like, ‘this is what we’re gonna focus on now.’ That led to my success in the latter part of the season every year.”

Dutch also did well in the 110’s, but, at 5-11, he was having trouble transitioning to the higher hurdles. “The three-inch difference was huge to me,” he said, “because I’m one of the shortest hurdlers. My hips were low. In high school I got away with sitting. With the additional three inches I had to bring my hips up. I struggled with that freshman year. My hips were always low. Being a 400 hurdler, I could get away with dropping my hips when I hurdle.”

Still, he ran 7.85 in the 60m hurdles his freshman year at the SEC Indoor Championships, good for seventh place. Outdoors he ran 13.63 the SEC Outdoor Championships, good for fourth.

In the 400 hurdles, he ran 48.68 at the SEC’s to finish second to Justin Gaymon of Georgia. At the Olympic Trials in late June, Dutch narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympic team, finishing fifth in the 400h final, only .06 behind 4^th-place finisher Gaymon, and only a tenth behind 3^rd-place finisher Angelo Taylor, who would go on to win Olympic gold. A week prior to the Trials, Dutch competed at USA Junior Nationals, where he finished second to Jeshua Anderson of Washington State, 49.28 to 49.74. Later that summer he competed at the World Junior Championships in Poland, where he again finished second to Anderson in 48.68 to 49.25.

With Dutch finishing higher at the Olympic Trials, but with Anderson getting the best of Dutch in head-to-head battles, a rivalry was forming between the two stellar hurdlers. But the two also formed a close friendship, having roomed together in Poland.

About the rivalry, Dutch says, “It was really cool because we would always run fast around the same time every year. Right around [the] conference [meet] one of us would run sub-49. It was like, who’s gonna hit sub-49 first? Whoever did it first, the other would hit it the next meet. So we knew it would be a good regional and NCAA. It was cool to have someone across the nation who was training just as hard as me. It kept me on my toes. The rivalry really got played up because everyone was always like, who’s gonna beat who? It was always gonna be me or him.”

As Dutch’s collegiate career continued and talented upperclassmen like Jason Richardson moved on to the professional ranks, Dutch took on a greater role on the team. In addition to the hurdling events, he also became a key member of Gamecock relay teams. His freshman year, he wasn’t fast enough to make the 4×400 team, but “after sophomore year, I was in every single 4×4,” he said, laughing.

After narrowly missing making the Olympic team as a freshman, Dutch’s focus shifted from the college scene to the international scene. Anderson defeated him at NCAA’s, 48.47 to 48.62, but Dutch went on to make his first USA team a couple weeks later. At USA Nationals, Dutch finished second to Bershawn Jackson, 48.03 to 48.18 – a new personal best at the time. Dutch defeated Taylor in that race, who finished 3^rd in 48.30.

But the long collegiate season proved to take its toll on Dutch, as he didn’t make to the finals of the 400h at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. Although he didn’t realize it so much at the time, Dutch says that competing against pros after completing a long collegiate season “was a major disadvantage. These guys on the circuit are fresh. [As a collegian], you’re just bound to be tired. But I just had that young mindset that I just keep going ‘til I can’t go anymore. Even when I was tired I didn’t know I was really tired. When you have a lot of collegiate runners who make teams and then don’t perform well, a lot of them are usually tired. It’s cool to make the team, but how are you gonna last through the World Championships? That’s definitely what happened to me when I made the team. I was dog tired by the time the World Championships came around.”

Besides feeling rundown, Dutch also was dealing with an injury in Berlin. After a workout shortly after making the US team, Dutch felt pain in his achilles tendon. “It was a slight tear,” he said. “I couldn’t walk on it for a week.” About three weeks later he just “sucked it up” and trained. “I was like, I made the team, so I can’t stop now. I was running in pain at the World Championships. It felt like any day I could pop it. Fortunately that didn’t happen. But it felt like it had popped. I didn’t tell anybody about it. A lot of people didn’t even know. They thought I was just burnt out.”

As a junior in 2010, Dutch avenged his defeat to Anderson at NCAA’s the previous year, crossing the line in 48.75 to Anderson’s 49.31. But Dutch says that winning an NCAA championship and proving himself the better of Anderson wasn’t his main goal. “My goal was USA’s, honestly,” he said. “There was something about running against the elite runners. That’s why I train. To run against the best, not just the best in college. Running in NCAA was a stepping stone. It let me know I could compete against the best.”

At the USA Championships, Dutch ran the race of his life. Or, the race of his life up to this point. In typical Dutch fashion, he took off like a rocket and held an early lead through the first five hurdles. But Jackson, known for being a strong finisher, overtook Dutch in the second half of the race and won in 47.32. Dutch finished second in 47.63, a huge personal best that still stands as his only sub-48 race to date.

In discussing the race, Dutch made the following observations: “I was in the best shape of my life, to the point where I didn’t have to think too much going into the race. At that point I had achieved my goals collegiately. My mind was free, I felt really fast. I could just go. I was somewhat carefree. I had done everything I needed to do. I was really well prepared. That race was a big blur. I felt really light. I was just running. Of course lactic acid hit me in the last thirty meters. But that was the best race of my life so far.”

That race convinced Dutch that he was ready to run with the big dogs on a regular basis. So he decided to forego his senior year of eligibility in order to turn professional. “Once I ran sub-48 I felt like it was time,” he said. “Physically I was there. Mentally I was ready to run against the best. It wasn’t about the money or Nike or having a shoe deal. I just felt like it was my time – time for me to go to the next level.”

Since he had been competing against pros at USA’s every year since his freshman year, the transition didn’t prove to be all that difficult. “If anything, it felt the same,” he said.

Initially, Dutch continued to train in South Carolina with Coach Frye. He stayed with Frye through 2012 before moving to Miami to train with Amy Deen. How did he connect with Deen? “In college I was friends with a couple of her hurdlers, I would hang out with the team. Eventually I was like, I’m looking for a place to train. She said sure you can come down. I took a couple trips down there. Things felt very natural, so it kind of fell into my lap.”

***

While the 400 hurdles is not as technically precise as the 110 hurdles, Dutch is an athlete whose background as a double hurdler serves him well when it comes to running clean, efficient races, minimizing the amount of energy needed to negotiate each barrier.  Dutch’s stride pattern throughout his post-high school career has been to take 21 steps to the first hurdle, thirteen through hurdle five, 14 for hurdles six and seven, and 15 over the last three. Naturally a right-leg lead, Dutch leads with his left leg at hurdle six. Though he has grown proficient at alternating, “it still feels awkward,” he says. “But people say it looks like my lead leg, but it doesn’t feel like my lead leg at all. I have to work on alternating [more] so that I don’t twist. I feel like I twist and I have to start over again [after I land]. That’s probably my biggest weakness now. It’s something I’m still working on.”

Meanwhile, all the 4×4 legs he ran at South Carolina and the base-heavy training he did as a collegian have enabled him to finish races strongly despite his tendency to go out hard in the early part of the race. Having such an extensive hurdling background, Dutch doesn’t rely on his open 400 speed as much as some of the other 400m hurdlers at the world class level. “Everybody’s different,” he said. “I’m more of a hurdler. In races, my focus is on keeping my stride pattern, executing my stride pattern. If I have an even race, it’ll be a good race. I need to be consistent throughout the race. If I’m good through eight hurdles then it’s a wrap. A lot of runners may have more of a sprint background but aren’t as good of hurdlers, so the running will help them. Put me in some flat 400 races to get a better 400 hurdle time – that’s not gonna happen. So it depends on your background.”

Since he started training with Coach Deen, Dutch no longer logs a lot of miles in his fall training like he used to. “She feels it gets you flat,” he explained, “and that it takes away from your speed and your hips being up. I go heavy in the weight room and I still do some [distance] runs on my own, but not like I used to in college. Back then I’d run a certain amount of miles per week. I don’t count miles now. So I’m putting less wear and tear on the body. You gotta train the body to go fast because that’s what it’s all about. It’s about that one race. Putting in miles isn’t really conducive to running fast.”

While Dutch hasn’t had any major struggles with injury outside of the achilles that plagued him at the 2009 World Championships, he has struggled with consistency, which seems to be the norm in the 400m hurdle race, also known as the “man killer” because of the enormous strain it puts on the body. Seeing as how so many 400 hurdlers have great seasons followed by down seasons, and how their performance can fluctuate dramatically from race to race, Dutch noted that the decade-plus success of the legendary Edwin Moses becomes all the more remarkable.

When asked to explain why it’s so difficult to stay consistent in this event, Dutch concurred that “it puts more stress on the body than any other event. More pounding. You’re in top shape one season, but then you have dry season when your body is just not responding. It’s hard for your body to maintain year round, every year. For Moses and [Kevin] Young to have done that is just fantastic.”

To stay healthy, Dutch routinely jogs and stretches after workouts. He also is a disciple of the ice bath. “I take care of my whole lower half,” he said. “Two or three ice baths a week. It decreases the inflammation. We put so much work on our legs. In college a lot of our 400 runners were taking ice baths all the time, so I took a cue from them. It’s really brought me a long way.”

2013 proved to be one of Dutch’s most consistent seasons. He started it with a bang, defeating Javier Culson of Puerto Rico in thrilling race on May 19^th at Francisco Montaner Stadium on Ponce, Puerto Rico, Dutch challenged the hometown hero (whom he referred to as “very humble, a really cool guy”) in his own backyard. The two battled stride for stride over the 400 meter oval. Dutch’s rhythm heading into the final barrier was a little better, enabling him to create a slight bit of separation from the taller Culson. Dutch crossed the line in 48.02 to Culson’s 48.36 – very fast times for so early in the season.

“I didn’t know I ran that fast ‘til I crossed the line,” Dutch reflected. “I trained really hard that week because I didn’t think I was gonna be ready to run that fast that soon. I had done a lot of weight training that week, was feeling tired. I guess we were running faster than I thought. The crowd [of 12,000 spectators] was one of the liveliest I’ve ever run in front of. It was like the Olympics. It was Javier’s home, so everyone was looking forward to that race. The weather was perfect. No wind, really warm. It felt really good.”

Footage of the race is below:

The emergence of young hurdlers like Culson and 2013 World Champion Jehue Gordon of Trinidad comes as no surprise to Dutch. The event is always evolving, and there are always new faces in the old places. Dutch grew up admiring Felix Sanchez of the Dominican Republic, who dominated the event in the early 2000s. “I used to love to watch him race,” Dutch said. “He was so small [5-9], but so powerful, flawless.” American James Carter was the other hurdler Dutch loved to watch. “He was a bigger guy. It was cool to watch a big muscled guy running the 400 hurdles.” Then there was the generation that he has had to prove his mettle against – Jackson, Clement, Taylor, and others.

Now the generation coming behind him continues to carry on the tradition. “Some of those guys were already elite at a younger age,” Dutch said. “With Gordon I saw it coming. He’s still young; he’s only 21. He was 4^th in Berlin as a 17-year-old. I knew it was a matter of time ‘til he started dominating.”

Unfortunately for Dutch, making the USA team for international competitions is about as difficult as it gets. Despite running many 48-low races in 2013, he experienced the disappointment of narrowly missing qualifying for a major championship. At the USA championships in June, Dutch finished a heartbreakingly close fourth, leaving him one spot away from a trip to Moscow. Veteran Michael Tinsley finished first in 47.96, while long-time greats Clement and Jackson finished second and third, respectively. Dutch ran a solid race all the way around the track, maintaining his stride pattern, putting himself in good position heading into the final straightaway to make a big push for the finish line.

But his 48.21 was a blink of an eye behind Jackson’s 48.09, and that was that. He went on to run very well in Diamond League meets throughout the summer, but he is still searching for that ever-elusive “in the zone” freedom from consciousness he felt in that 47.63 race from 2010.

Click here for footage of the 2013 USA Champs 400 hurdle final:
http://www.usatf.tv/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=45365&mgroup_event_id=49&year+2013&do=videos&video_id=94312

Looking into the immediate future, Dutch plans to compete at the USA Championships this coming June in Sacramento. With no international championship meet being held in 2014, Dutch is also contemplating returning to double hurdler mode, as he misses running the 110’s and still feels he can be successful in that event at the world class level.

His personal best over the 42-inch barriers is a 13.50 that he ran at a low-key college meet in May of 2010 in Chapel Hill, NC. Though he did have trouble adapting to the higher obstacles coming out of high school, he feels that he would have been able to make the necessary adjustments had he trained for the 110’s and competed in the event regularly. “But a lot of coaches don’t believe in the double,” he said. “They think you have to focus on one or the other – whichever one you’re best at because it takes so much time to master one. But I feel like if you train for something you can make it work. It’s just hard to find other people who believe in the double.”

Dutch did double at a meet in Ostrava last summer. He won the 400 hurdles and won his heat in the 110s against local athletes. “I had fun doing that double,” he said. “It felt special to be invited to be able to compete in both.”

***

Having spent more than half of his years on the planet running over hurdles, Dutch has learned much about himself that has broadened his perspective on life. “Being a hurdler has taught me about all aspects of life,” he said. “It’s taught me patience; things aren’t gonna happen when you want them to. That carries over to the real world. And I know it sounds cliché, but if you work hard for something and you’re consistent, you can achieve whatever you’re working hard for. There were plenty of times I didn’t think I’d be an NCAA champion or world class, but I’m running internationally. In real life it’s the same thing. If you work hard and don’t give up, you can achieve that goal. Hurdling has taught me so many things.”

The lesson he wants to pass on to young athletes is a simple yet profound one: “Every winner loses. So be prepared to lose. Every champion has come in 2^nd, 3^rd, or even last at some point. You’re not always gonna be the best, but you can be the best if you stay persistent and consistent. Just know that every champion you see on TV had a point when they weren’t first and no one looked at them as a threat, but eventually they got their championship.”

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