In Doha McLeod lowers world lead

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Prior to his departure for Doha last Monday, Jamaica’s Omar McLeod and his coach Doug Case discussed the plan for the season as they build towards the hunt for gold the Olympics in Rio this summer.

It involved not running any ‘crazy fast times’.

Everything has been going according to plan save for the fact that McLeod can’t help going faster and faster. In Qatar on Friday, McLeod ran a world-leading 13.05s to win the Doha
Diamond League 110-metres hurdles ahead of fellow Jamaican Hansle Parchment 13.10 and Spain’s Orlando Ortega 13.12.

It was his second world-leading time in a week following his 13.08s run at the Drake Relays last Saturday.

Case would not necessarily have been surprised by Friday’s time given that the 22-year-old has been impressive all season long.

In February he won the World Indoor Championships and then just over a week ago, he created history by becoming the first sprint hurdler to break 10-seconds in the 100 metres when he ran 9.99 in Arkansas.

Case said the improvement could be a season long process that they had been preparing for from the offseason.

“That’s why we opened up so late. We waited basically until May to open up. The way you maintain that (the competitive edge) is with a great base that we developed here (at Arkansas where McLeod trains and attends school) through the fall and Omar works really hard. It’s a lot of work and it gets your core strong. It gets everything strong, your tendons, your ligaments, everything to withstand a long season,” Case explained.

“You also have to have a solid weight programme that will help you maintain that strength and that speed for a long period of time.”

The focus on strength as well as managing McLeod’s ever-improving speed will continue throughout the season, honing him into the best hurdler in the world by August. “I told him, here’s what we are going to do; we’re working through these meets. We’re not going to try and run any crazy fast times right now. We are going to continue to lift weights, we’re going to continue to do workouts, and we are going to stay with this thing because our ultimate goal is much later down the road.”