The gun pointed at my face . . . I ran off as he fired at me
BRITISH SPRINTER ZHARNEL HUGHES RECALLS HOW HIS SPEED SAVED HIM FROM A LIFE-THREATENING AMBUSH
ZHARNEL HUGHES is reflecting on the moment when he needed to be faster than several speeding bullets and the crazed man firing them. It’s not a memory he enjoys pulling up.
‘I buried this thing deep in my head, I have tried not to talk too much about it,’ he tells Sportsmail. It’s the British sprinter’s first major newspaper interview since the madness of January 23 and he still can’t find the right words.
‘That thing that happened, wow — what else do you call it? It was like a movie.’
He will later discuss the Commonwealth Games 200metres gold medal that was lost to disqualification and the relay gold that eased some of the pain. And he will talk about June 9, when he covered the 100m in what was a world- leading 9.91sec, and the exceptional battle brewing at the British trials on Saturday. He will discuss Linford Christie’s 25-year- old 100m record, minding his manners in front of Usain Bolt, and his belief that he might be an Olympic champion one day.
But first, the 22-year-old picks up the staggering tale of what played out five months ago in the car park of his training base at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.
‘I was at the trunk of my car putting on my sneakers and I saw this shadow in front of me,’ he says. ‘Then this guy is asking me for my phone and wallet.
‘I was thinking, “What?” and then I see his gun. So then it is, like, “OK, is this actually happening to me?” It was one of those panic situations. The gun is pointing at my stomach and my face and then I just got the smallest window because, I don’t know, he was looking away for a second. I took my chance.’
Hughes turned and sprinted while the gunman fired at him. ‘I just jumped down and hid under a car,’ he says. ‘Then someone else, a licensed firearm holder, came and fired back at him. Shots were being exchanged and the guy starts running away and firing wild shots all over the place. Other athletes were jumping down.
‘When it was over, I got out and saw they were lying in the gravel, under the benches. There was a girl who uses the track and she was having an asthma attack. I went to my car and I was sitting there, thinking, “What was that?” It was all just a few seconds but, wow.’
It was a remarkable sideshow in an eventful year. But it says something about Hughes’s ambitions for this season that he was training within half an hour. ‘My season was starting at
the end of that week,’ he says. ‘I needed to get on the track. It’s a very important season.’
It’s a mindset born from the recurring disappointments since his 2015 switch of international allegiance to Britain, owing to his birth in the British overseas territory of Anguilla.
He was fifth in the 200m at the World Championships that year,
but injured for the Rio Olympics, 18th in the 2016 Europeans and nowhere near the 200m final at last year’s worlds in London.
This has been his breakthrough year, even if some of the sheen was scrubbed off with his disqualification from the 200m final at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. On his lap of honour after crossing in first
place, replays circulated that showed he had stumbled in the final strides and caught Trinidad & Tobago’s Jereem Richards with an arm. Hughes was filmed in mid- celebration when an official told him that something might be amiss.
‘That was heartbreaking,’ he says. ‘But I had the relay heats the next day. I didn’t want
my problems to be their problems.’ Running the second leg of the 4x100m for England, Hughes won gold — but it was only partial compensation. ‘It felt good but at the same time I still felt like something was missing,’ he says. ‘I now have to live with it so I am using it to help.‘The first conversation I had with my coach when I left Australia, I told him, “Coach, this is never going to happen again. I’ll work even harder”.’ Results have been impressive. He put his focus on the 100m following his return and broke 10 seconds for the first time last month, albeit with an illegal tailwind, and then legally equalled the second fastest British time in history with 9.91sec in Jamaica in June. It was just 0.04sec shy of Linford Christie’s national record. ‘The record is 9.87 and I ran 9.91 with the blocks slipping at the start, so I can get it,’ he says. Hughes’s emergence at the distance adds to the startling depth of British 100m sprinting. Reece Prescod ran an illegal 9.88sec in May, CJ Ujah is the Diamond League champion, Adam Gemili, Nathaneel MitchellBlake and Joel Fearon are sub-10sec runners and Ojie Edoburun has gone 10.04sec this year. The face-off at the British trials in Birmingham will be fascinating. But Hughes’s wider objective is the global field. He used to train occasionally in Jamaica with Usain Bolt and is one of the many looking at the opportunities presented by the great sprinter’s retirement. ‘Everyone wants to be the next Bolt but he is an immortal,’ Hughes says. ‘Look at him run 9.91 like I did — he does that jogging. When he comes to training now and starts trying to be the coach, you all mind your Ps and Qs. He is the legend.’ But still, they all aspire. On his own potential, Hughes says: ‘I am setting no limits. If I can stay healthy I can become a world or Olympic champion.’ It’s an ambitious aim but at least he still has the chance to pursue it.