T&T’s Jereem Richards emerged on the scene as a lead­ing glob­al sprint force by tak­ing 200m bronze at the IAAF World Cham­pi­onships Lon­don 2017. Not un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the 24-year-old speed­ster re­lives the thrill of his podi­um dwelling ex­pe­ri­ence as his high mo­ment and draws from a dispir­it­ing ex­pe­ri­ence the pre­vi­ous year for his low mo­ment. In speak­ing to Steve Lan­dells of the IAAF he re­vealed the fol­low­ing.

Low

At the Hamp­ton Games Heats, my last race be­fore de­part­ing for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma in May 2016, I stepped off the track heart­bro­ken. I had just record­ed 50.61 for the 400m – which was the first time I had record a 50-sec­ond time for three or four years (Richards’ PB at the time was 45.91).

I felt bro­ken be­cause I pushed so hard in that race. To try to make up for the dis­ap­point­ment, I ran the 200m straight af­ter, which was a big mis­take be­cause I end­ed up record­ing 21.80 in­to a big neg­a­tive wind (-3.7m/s). Every­thing had gone against me that day and with the Olympic Tri­als com­ing up the fol­low­ing month, I was se­ri­ous­ly wor­ried about how my sea­son would progress.

The back­ground to reach­ing that point was in the fall of 2015 I had grad­u­at­ed from my ju­nior col­lege to sign for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma. Be­cause of a lack of funds, they weren’t able to ac­cept me at that time and I had to sit out a se­mes­ter. This was very frus­trat­ing, so I de­cid­ed to head back to Trinidad to con­tin­ue train­ing.

I didn’t want to be a fi­nan­cial bur­den on my fam­i­ly, so I took up a job work­ing af­ter­noons as a per­son­al fit­ness train­er, some­times un­til as late as 9pm. It was hard to get up ear­ly, train, head back for lunch, work and then re­peat the cy­cle the next day. I was jug­gling too many things and I was get­ting in­suf­fi­cient rest. This is what was con­tribut­ing to my poor form.

High

Af­ter the dif­fi­cul­ties I’d en­dured in the first half of 2016, it is hard to be­lieve some 15 months lat­er I was stood on the podi­um cel­e­brat­ing a bronze medal in the 200m at the 2017 World Cham­pi­onships.

My jour­ney to that point ac­cel­er­at­ed as soon as I ar­rived at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma in mid-May 2016. There I start­ed work­ing with my coach Blaine Wylie, who has been like a fa­ther fig­ure to me. We worked so hard, I had ac­cess to the best fa­cil­i­ties and we could see im­prove­ments.

I ran 46.02 in the 400m at T&T’s Olympic Tri­als in June to make the 4x400m squad for Rio. I didn’t get to com­pete in Rio, but the ex­pe­ri­ence was like no oth­er. I was ex­posed to many high-cal­i­bre ath­letes and it re­al­ly sparked some­thing in my heart and act­ed as a re­al mo­ti­va­tion for the fu­ture.

I took en­cour­age­ment from my team-mate Machel Ce­de­nio run­ning a na­tion­al 400m record (of 44.01) to place fourth in Rio. He is from the same bor­ough I’m from in Trinidad and I thought, ‘if he can do it, why can’t I?’

I wrote down a list of my goals for 2017 on a board and re­turned back to train­ing. I knew my hard work start­ed to pay off when I ran 20.57 in­doors for 200m in my first race of 2017. At that point my out­door PB was 20.58 and my in­door best was 21.06. From the be­gin­ning of the in­door sea­son, I was a dif­fer­ent ath­lete.

Go­ing in­to the World Cham­pi­onships in Lon­don, my ex­pec­ta­tion was that I want­ed a medal. Sur­pris­ing­ly, I wasn’t ner­vous. I had noth­ing to lose and every­thing to gain. I want­ed to make a name for my­self.

I pro­gressed smooth­ly through the rounds and in the fi­nal I want­ed to re­main re­laxed and calm. I came off the bend in sixth, think­ing I still had some work to do. But I didn’t pan­ic and as I came down the home stretch I re­alised I had a chance for a medal. Clos­er to the fin­ish line, I leaned. It was very close be­tween Wayde van Niek­erk and he edged me out of sil­ver but I had se­cured bronze.

To climb that medal podi­um in Lon­don was elec­tri­fy­ing. I’ve looked up to Ato Boldon (the 1997 world 200m cham­pi­on) since I was a lit­tle boy and to em­u­late my coun­try­man and stand on the medal podi­um at a ma­jor cham­pi­onship was some­thing very spe­cial.

Grow­ing up, I want­ed to be just like Ato. I used to flex my mus­cles just like him, which is fun­ny be­cause I am a lit­tle, skin­ny guy. I re­al­ly look up to him. He is one of the most phe­nom­e­nal ath­letes we’ve ever had. To be even men­tioned in the same sen­tence as Ato in Trinidad is a great achieve­ment.

(SOURCE - IAAF)