Grabbing strength from disappointment

DISAPPOINTMENTS HAVE made Danielle Williams stronger. That’s the insight from the man who has coached her to two World Championships 100 metres hurdles titles, Lennox Graham.

Williams, the 2015 World Champion, produced a stunning upset last week in Budapest with a season’s best time of 12.43 seconds to defeat Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and former world record holder, Kenny Harrison.

A little more than a year earlier, she crashed and burned in the 60 metres hurdles heats at the World Indoor Championships and Graham says she has emerged stronger from her tribulations.

“She hates to lose, I think, more than she loves to win, but I think that the amount of times that she has lost in her career and especially after hitting number one in the world in terms of the World Championships in 2015, the amount of disappointments that she has had, it has served to make her stronger,” said Graham yesterday.

“Her faith has grown, and it has served to make her be at peace, knowing that once you put your all out there, whatever the result is, you’re going to live with it.”

One of her competitors, 2019 winner Nia Ali of the United States, noticed the sense of calm Williams was carrying with her in Budapest.

“How you look like it’s just a Diamond League meet for you. You don’t even look too concerned or excited or scared or anything,” Graham, a six-time Kingston College Boys’ Championships winning coach, related.

“The reason she feels that way is because she knew we put in all the work we could put in and whatever happens, it was going to be up to God. So that’s the level of peace that you can’t surpass,” said the coach.

Her season turned on a two-race series in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 4 where she clocked 12.54 and 12.70 in the heats and final, respectively.

“We had a good prelim in the first half. The second half was not good. In the final, we kind of hit a hurdle early, hurdle 1, and it took us across the track, and she got desperate and finished really hard, and for me, it was just like, ‘Ants, if you can put together both halves of that race, the first half of the heats and the last half of the final, it’s going to be hard for anybody to beat you,” he recalled.

Everything came together in Budapest.

Williams is now the first Jamaican hurdler, male or female, to win two individual World Championships titles and Graham is delighted.

“2015 was unexpected. This one was unexpected but this one is so much sweeter. This one is so much sweeter. It took a lot of hard work because there was a lot more at stake as she was really down for a while and kept getting injured, injuries or accidents, all that stuff, so this one was sweet, man. This was extremely sweet.”