Golding-Clarke learned from the best

TWENTY YEARS ago on July 31, 2002, Lacena Golding-Clarke settled into the blocks for the 100-metre hurdles final at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. Less than 13 seconds later, she was the gold medal winner. Now, she is the coach of the World champion and world record holder, Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan.

Speaking at the 2019 Carifta Games, Golding-Clarke intimated that her experience as an athlete had made an impact on her coaching career, which has seen her work for a decade at the University of Texas El Paso.

“On my part, I have been there,” she had said.

“I just want them to have that success that I had and parts of the success I didn’t have, so I’m coaching my hurdlers to be the best in the world, you know, even if they are freshmen in college.”

The two-time Jamaican Olympic long jumper recruited Amusan to El Paso in 2015 and by 2016, the partnership was beginning to show promise. Amusan lost to Jasmin Camacho-Quinn, then at the University of Kentucky, at the 2016 NCAA Championships and came back to pip the Puerto Rican, 12.57 to 12.58 seconds in the NCAA final in 2017.

Amusan graduated to the top level with a win over Jamaica’s 2015 World champion Danielle Williams at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

As a schoolgirl, Golding-Clarke was part of the powerhouse Vere Technical High School track and field programme. During her time there, she excelled in the long jump, triple jump, high jump and discus.

Best coaches

She says the fundamentals she learnt at Vere help her as a coach today.

“They brought in some of the best coaches around Jamaica who just came in just to teach us technique, and so John Messam was that person for me. I’m just thankful that I had one of the best,” she said of Messam, who himself was the 1978 Carifta under-20 110-metre hurdles champion.

She also thanked veteran coach Fitz Coleman for the role he played in a career that also saw her reach two World Indoor 60-metre hurdles finals.

Golding has revealed the elements of the training programme that vaulted Amusan from a personal best of 12.42 seconds, set last year, to a world record 12.12 in last Sunday’s World Championship semi-finals.

“We focused more on staying healthy, we drilled technique that needed to be taken care of, and, of course, we paid extra attention to her rhythm/speed endurance,” she told sportsmax.tv earlier this week.

The Amusan personal best was clipped to 12.41 in Paris in June and to 12.40 in the Eugene semi-final.

Her winning time in the final was 12.06 seconds but had the benefit of an over-the-allowable tailwind of 2.5 metres per second.

Golding-Clarke and husband David will be moving to Auburn University where she was a 1997 NCAA finalist in the 100m hurdles and in the long jump.