Hurdling after a landmark
Sarah Claxton (Belgrave Harriers) heads for the Olympic Games in Athens knowing that a swift little personal best will enable her to join the elite band of eight UK athletes who have run the 100m hurdles in under 13 seconds.
“A personal best would be as good as a medal for me,” says 24-year-old Claxton, whose fastest time so far is 13.01 seconds, which she achieved at the Bedford International Games on 13 June this year.
“I want to go under 13 seconds,” she adds, knowing that such a success could take her further up the UK all-time list, in which she currently stands ninth behind:
- Angie Thorp (Wigan), who set the UK record of 12.80 seconds in the build-up to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta
- Sally Gunnell (Essex Ladies) 12.82 in 1988, four years before she became the Olympic 400m hurdles Champion
- Shirley Strong (Stretford AC) 12.87 in 1983, 11 days after she clocked a wind-assisted 12.78 for fifth place in the final at the inaugural World Championships and a year before she won the Olympic Silver medal in 12.88.
- Jacqui Agyepong (Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers) 12.90 in 1995, when she reached the World Championships semi-finals
- Kay Morley-Brown (Cardiff AAC) 12.91 to win the Commonwealth Games title in 1990
- Diane Allahgreen (Liverpool Harriers) 12.92 at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester
- Keri Maddox (Cannock and Stafford AC) 12.95 at the 1999 World Championships
- Tasha Danvers-Smith (Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers) 12.96 near her Californian base in June 2003 as she prepared for the 400m hurdles at the World Championships in Paris.
“I just want to do my best – take each round as it goes,” says Claxton, who seems to have finally resolved one pleasant problem that has been with her ever since she entered athletics aged 10 or 11, whether to be a hurdler or long jumper.
She won four English Schools long jump titles. She long jumped for Norwich Union GB at the 1998 Spar European Cup, while she was still a Junior. Indeed, only a few weeks later, she doubled-up at the 1998 World Junior Championships in the French city of Annecy: she finished fourth in the long jump with a PB of 6.52m, but went out in the first round of the hurdles. Her Norwich Union GB Team mate and biggest teenage rival back home in Essex, Julie Pratt (Woodford Green with Essex Ladies) went on to win the 100m hurdles title.
In the following year, Claxton won the UK Inter-Counties 100m hurdles title (a feat she repeated last year before Platt succeeded her this year) and went on to improve her long jump PB to 6.56m at the Loughborough International.
In 2000, she won Silver medals in both events at the Norwich Union Under 23 Championships and doubled-up at the European Under 23 Championships, finishing fourth in her 100m hurdles heat and 10th in the long jump.
Come 2001, she earned a 60m hurdles place in the Norwich Union GB Team at the IAAF World Indoor Championships (a feat she has repeated in the last two winters).
She long jumped at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, finishing 12th (5.77m).
In 2003, she topped the UK 60m hurdles rankings during the winter (8.12 seconds), was third in the 100m hurdles rankings (with a season’s best of 13.12 seconds behind Danvers-Smith and her Belgrave club mate Rachel King, who contested the World Championships in Paris) and was ranked eighth in the long jump (6.25m in a low-key meeting at the end of the season, competing almost for old time’s sake).
“I do better in the hurdles,” she accepts now, having earned a place on the UK Athletics World Class Potential Programme, funded from the Lottery by Sport England, for her track times last year. “I think I’ve been doing more training for the hurdles than I have for the long jump. And I have been aiming for the Olympics all year, ever since I went warm weather training to California in the spring. The aim all along was to try and get the qualifying time.”
The company was right, too. She pays fulsome praise to all the coaches who have helped her during her career – Roy Nicklin when she first joined her local club at Colchester; Cynthia Sketchley and former hurdles international Judy Vernon as she moved through the age groups and now Lloyd Cowan, who has gathered a high quality group to work together.
Ask her what has got her to Athens, and her reply is short and to the point: “My coach and hard work.”
She trains with 20-year-old Jenni Molloy (Bournemouth AC) most of the time while Andy Turner (Notts AC) and Rob Newton (Sale Harriers Manchester) are rarely far away. There are not too many training groups in the UK that can boast three Olympians selected for Athens!
Moreover, all are in the infancy of their international careers. Claxton heads a domestic list of considerable pedigree, too. King, currently ranked second in the UK with her season’s best of 13.18 at the Norwich Union British Grand Prix at Gateshead on 27 June, competed in last year’s World Championships. Diane Allahgreen (Trafford AC), third with 13.23 at the Bedford International Games after a brave recovery from long-term injury, was at the 2000 Olympics. Kelly Sotherton (Birchfield Harriers), fourth with 13.29 also at the Bedford International Games, is the global heptathlon discovery of the year. Pratt, fifth with 13.33, remains determined to prove that World Junior Champions can make it to the top as Seniors.
Yet such are global standards that Claxton is currently 51st in the World rankings, which are headed by the reigning World Champion, Perdita Felicien (Canada), who clocked 12.46 at the Prefontaine Classic IAAF Grand Prix meeting in Oregon on 19 June. Ranked second, with a season’s best of 12.50 seconds, is the legendary Gail Devers (USA), who has two Olympic Games 100m Gold medals and has won three World 100m hurdles titles but has yet to collect an Olympics hurdles medal of any colour.
That said, Claxton is beginning to pick-off some scalps. Five-hundredths of a second behind her in the current rankings is Patricia Girard (France), the 1996 Olympics Bronze medallist.
Not that the current UK No.1 will have anyone else in her sights as she settles to her blocks in Athens: “I just want to do my best.”
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