Johnson Clears Mental Hurdle

Allen Johnson replayed his fourth-place finish at the Sydney Olympics in an endless loop in his mind, unwilling to forgive himself or to forget that he failed to successfully defend the 110-meter hurdles title he had won at Atlanta.

When misfortune struck again last year at Athens, where he was again considered the front-runner but crashed out of the first round, he handled it much differently.

“I let Athens go,” he said. “I think I dwelled on Sydney for a long time.

“Because I was a little bit older, I understood that it wasn’t the end of the world that I didn’t win, that it was OK to come up short at the Olympics because there’s also the world championships.”

Injuries and post-Olympic malaise have thinned the field at this year’s world championships, which start today at Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium. Among the missing will be 100-meter world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica, who has a groin injury, 400-meter hurdles champion Jana Pittman of Australia, who has a sore back, and Olympic 1,500-meter and 5,000-meter champion Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, who has tonsillitis.

However, the men’s 110 hurdles field is impressively deep, posing a challenge for Johnson as he vies for his fifth world title.

“It’s the evolution of one’s career,” the 34-year-old South Carolina resident said Friday at a news conference featuring members of the U.S. team. “You start out the underdog, become the favorite and then become the underdog again.”

He’s hardly an also-ran after having run the second-fastest time in the world this season, 12.99 seconds, to win the U.S. championships in late June at the Home Depot Center in Carson. But Ladji Doucoure of France ran a world-leading 12.97 in July and was timed in 13 seconds in beating a trio of Americans last week in Oslo, where Johnson finished fourth in 13.34.

Dominique Arnold of Diamond Bar, Terrence Trammell of Atlanta and Joel Brown of Baltimore round out the U.S. 110-meter hurdle contingent. Arnold has run 13.01 this season and Trammell has run 13.02, both at the U.S. championships. Olympic gold medalist Liu Xiang of China has a season-best of 13.05, well off the world-record-tying 12.91 he ran at Athens.

Trammell won silver in the event at Sydney and Athens, but Arnold and Brown have never competed at the world championships or Olympics. Doucoure, 22, was in contention for a medal at Athens until he hit the last two hurdles. The hurdles heats will be contested on Wednesday and the final on Friday.

“This is where new stars are made, old stars fade away and current stars continue to be stars,” Johnson said.

He insisted he’s not a fading star, despite his defeat at Oslo. Instead, he attributed it to rustiness, saying he had curtailed his European schedule after experiencing a calf muscle spasm early in the summer and hadn’t raced in four weeks before the Oslo meet.

“I was breaking the cobwebs,” Johnson said. “Oslo is not an indication of how I’m going to perform.... Everybody is so tightly bunched. This year, 13.05 is the fifth- or sixth-fastest time and I’ve never experienced that since I’ve been running. Guys have run 12.97, 13.01, 13.02. Nobody has dominated.

“First you have to think about advancing to the final,” he said. “As far as the final goes, it’s going to be who makes the least amount of mistakes, who keeps their head best. The most talented person may not win.”

The women’s 100-meter hurdles field is equally formidable.

UCLA alumna Michelle Perry, who temporarily dropped the heptathlon to focus on the hurdles, has recorded four of the world’s top five times this season, including a world-best 12.43 on June 26 in her semifinal at the U.S. championships. Olympic champion Joanna Hayes of Los Angeles, a fellow Bruin and Perry’s training partner with coach Bob Kersee, has the other top-five time, 12.47.

The field also will include defending world champion Perdita Felicien of Canada and USC’s Virginia Powell.

“Mentally, if I’m together, I win,” Hayes said.

But Perry disagreed. “I think I have a lot left in me,” she said. “I want to go as far as I can possibly go.”

U.S. athletes won 17 medals at the 2003 world championships and 19 in 2001. Craig Masback, chief executive of USA Track and Field, said those numbers “would be good.... That’s the range that we expect.”

The U.S. medal count could be hampered by Athens 200-meter gold medalist Shawn Crawford’s decision to skip the 200 because of a foot injury. He does plan to run the 100 and be part of the 400-meter relay pool. Crawford’s spot in the 200 will go to Wallace Spearmon, Jr., who won the NCAA title for Arkansas in June and last month ran a world-leading 19.89.

Today’s highlight will be the first step in Briton Paula Radcliffe’s attempt to double in the 10,000 and the marathon. Radcliffe, the marathon world-record holder, failed to finish either event at Athens, which had been spaced only five days apart. This time, she has eight days to rest between races.