No obstacle too great – hurdles star who defied a broken hand
With just a few minutes until race time, Kendra Harrison sprung out of the blocks on the Doha practice track to go through the final motions of her warm-up.
It was little more than an exercise to ensure the body was moving fluidly but, attempting to clear the first hurdle in front of her, disaster struck when she smashed her left hand into the barrier.
Despite knowing that serious damage had been caused – and in considerable pain – she somehow managed to put the incident behind her and continued with the job she had set out to do, destroying the field in 12.59 seconds to win the first Diamond League 100 metres hurdles race of 2017. Only then did she go to hospital.
Incredibly, an X-ray showed she
‘There was only two minutes to the gun, so I figured I just had to run. I was in such a lot of pain’
had run faster than any other woman in the world up to that point with a broken hand – an injury so severe that it would require surgery to insert a metal rod and six screws.
Harrison, 24, laughs as she recounts the tale. What might seem astounding to outsiders is bizarrely matter-of-fact to the quickest female sprint hurdler of all time. “The season didn’t start as planned,” she says, with perfect understatement. “I was doing my final push out over the first hurdle and I guess I didn’t bring my hand up high enough, so it went through the hurdle and I broke it.
“My adrenalin was going because there was only about two minutes to the gun, so I figured I just had to run. I definitely was in a lot of pain – I knew something serious was wrong because I’ve never broken a bone before. So when I ran across the line I had to go get it checked out.
“But I’m ready to run fast now, so I think breaking my hand kind of slowed me down a bit and hopefully it means I can peak for the World Championships.”
Harrison’s ability to turn a negative into a positive should come as no surprise. Last year she arrived at the United States Olympic Trials fresh off the back of the fastest 100m hurdles time in 28 years, only to suffer catastrophe in the final when she only finished sixth.
With the US employing a cut-throat policy of only selecting the top three finishers, Harrison’s Olympic dream was shattered – the fastest sprint hurdler in the world would be forced to watch Rio 2016 from afar.
While many would have brought an abrupt end to their season, Harrison did the opposite. She arrived at the Muller Anniversary Games in London just a fortnight later and ran 12.20sec to break a world record that had stood for longer than she had been alive. It was a breathtaking performance.
“Last year I was running with a vengeance because of doing so poorly at the Olympic Trials and knowing that I was No 1 in the world,” she says. “The question of missing the Olympics is always going to come up until the next Olympics and I’m able to prove myself.
“This year I definitely think I can run another personal best and that’s what I plan on doing by the time the season ends.”
Assured of her place at the upcoming London World Championships thanks to finishing top of the Diamond League standings last season, Harrison was not required to even compete at this year’s US Trials. Instead, she decided to confront her demons and won.
“There were two reasons for running there,” she says. “I wanted to go get over that hump of messing up last year, so I knew I had to go to the meet and run well.
“When I was on the line I was like ‘OK, you’re not going to repeat what you did last year – you can do this and you will do this’. So I was just happy that I was able to overcome that.
“Also, I wanted to run the rounds because I’d sat out a month and not competed since breaking my hand, so I had to get back into race form.
Those were two really important things I had to do.”
Back to full fitness and targeting another world record in the coming weeks, there is little doubt that Harrison lines up in London for this weekend’s Muller Anniversary Games and the World Championships that follow as favourite to win the first global title of her career.
After that, the fastest 100m hurdler of all time has set herself a rather unexpected challenge: achieving the same feat in a different event.
It is easy to forget that just two years ago, while still in education and busy winning the national collegiate 100m hurdles title, Harrison managed to rank fifth in the world that year over 400m hurdles.
She has not raced over the longer distance since then, but with no Olympic Games or World Championships next season, she has plans to lay the foundations for
Her goal is unprecedented, but she has done things few others can even contemplate
what would be a unique feat of winning global medals at both the 100m hurdles and 400m hurdles in 2019.
“Me and my coach will talk at the end of this season, but doing the 400m hurdles is something I want to try again,” she says. “It’s been two years since I tried it and seeing how fast the 400m hurdlers are running this year is exciting.
“Next year is an off year, so I’d probably stick to the longer event, have a break from the 100m hurdles and show everybody that I’m a diverse hurdler.
“If I win the World Champs [this summer] it will give me a bye for 2019, so I would be able to just do the 400m hurdles at Trials and then double up at the 2019 World Champs.”
Her goal is unprecedented, but Harrison has already done things that few others can contemplate. Not even a broken hand can stop her.