Canadian clears toughest hurdle before worlds
Oshawa steeplechaser Hughes recovers from freak accident just in time for London
LONDON— Matt Hughes leaps over hurdles higher than a kitchen table and through awkward water jumps as if they were barely there, and he does it all on an exhausted set of legs. And yet, not once, has he fallen in the 3,000-metre steeplechase.
But he did run into a plain old fire hydrant on a sidewalk, and that freak accident left him with an oddly devastating injury that very nearly ended his trip to the world athletics championships, where he competes Sunday.
“It was so stupid,” Hughes said recently, recounting the great fire hydrant incident.
He was in Portland, Ore., where he lives and trains, and out for a run with a dozen fellow Bowerman Track Club runners. He was at the back of the pack and the others parted around the fire hydrant in their path, but he didn’t see it until it was too late and plowed right into with his left knee.
“I didn’t feel like I hit it that hard, and I actually finished the run — we had a two-hour run that day and it was right at the beginning,” the 28year-old from Oshawa said. “I didn’t think it was that bad.” Turns out it was. He struggled for weeks to find a diagnosis for a swollen knee that just didn’t seem to be getting better. The best an MRI could come up with was inflammation and scar tissue.
There was no tear, luckily, but so much swelling that he couldn’t bend his knee. And a runner who can’t bend his knee isn’t much use, especially in steeplechase.
Hughes wasn’t able to train for almost two months — valuable time that he needed to be his best in a world championship year.
It wasn’t until mid-May that he started training again and, on the back of his previous preparation more than anything else, managed to qualify for these championships at July’s Canadian trials. That race in Ottawa was his very first 3,000-metre steeplechase since the Rio Olympics, where he finished 10th — the best ever by a Canadian.
Immediately after that race he was looking ahead to what he had to do to perform here.
“After another five weeks of good speed work, I’m pretty confident I can go into London and be very competitive,” he said at the time. “That’s what this sport is all about for me: being competitive, getting on a start line and feeling like you can take on the world.”
Sunday morning, he finds out if he can. He says he’s had long stretches of encouraging workouts alongside American Olympic silver medallist Evan Jager, but he’s had a hard time showing that in races.
“It’s been a frustrating last 12 months. I got hurt just before Rio, again nothing big. I just kind of pulled my calf,” he said.
“I ran in Rio and it was great, but it wasn’t anything I was proud of. I felt like it was a missed opportunity for me. I was in really good shape and the Olympics only come around once every four years.”
Hughes hasn’t exactly picked an easy sport, or one that Canadians have typically excelled at. Kenya has won the past six Olympic titles and13 of the 18 available medals.
Training partner Jager, who set the fastest time of the year at 8:01.29 last month, is looking to become the first non-Kenyan winner of the men’s event at the worlds.
Hughes — who set the Canadian record of 8:11.64 when he finished sixth at the 2013 world championships — hopes he can find a way, despite the odds and time lost to injury, to join him on the podium and lower the Canadian standard.
“I know I have to bring that record down to 8.0-something if I’m going to be competitive with the Kenyans,” he said. “Once you get into that 8.0 range anything can happen at a major championships.”