Ready to break barriers

After crowning her breakout season with the gold in Moscow, Brianna Rollins is all set to go places

A young woman who has handled the day-in-day-out pandemonium of having six younger brothers is not likely to panic at the prospect of facing seven other hurdlers.

“They’re always energetic and it’s sometimes annoying, but I love them to death,” Brianna Rollins said of her siblings.

Rollins is just 22 years old; she is also the fastest women’s 100 metres hurdler in 21 years.Her winning time of 12.26 seconds at the US championships in June was the sort of performance that makes track geeks do cartwheels into the Des Moines night.

It was a North American record, better than Gail Devers’ 13-year-old mark of 12.33. It was also only five-hundredths of a second short of the long-elusive world record, set by Yordanka Donkova of Bulgaria in 1988.

“Hurdlers usually peak at around 27 years old,” said Joanna Hayes, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 100 hurdles from the United States. “What Brianna is doing just isn’t done. It’s fair to call her a hurdle prodigy.”

The hurdle prodigy showed her mettle at the World Championships in Moscow, winning the gold medal against a very experienced, accomplished oppostion. 

It included Sally Pearson, the reigning world and Olympic champion from Australia, and Dawn Harper, the American who won the 2008 Olympic title and finished second to Pearson last year at the London Games.

It was the first time Rollins was racing Pearson, who ran 12.28 when she won the world title in 2011 and dominated the event until this season, when a series of hamstring injuries slowed her progress. Pearson pushed to be healthy for the World Championships and looked sharp in her opening round and the semifinals. But in the finals, Rollins showed she held the edge at the moment, winning in 12.44 seconds to the Australian’s 12.50, a season’s best.

Pearson and Rollins were initially scheduled to race in Monaco last month, but Rollins did not take part in the meet, prompting suggestions that she was dodging Pearson until Moscow.

“It’s not true,” Rollins said. “My coach and I had a plan on what I was going to do when I was starting my professional career. This is my first time running in Europe, so we wanted to come out here and just see and get the feel of it and see how it is to run overseas and just get my body used to it, because I’ve never done it before. So it was no dodging anybody. It was just coming up with a game plan for myself and not thinking about anybody else.”

Rollins, Pearson and Harper are all remarkable technicians and it is a joy to watch them flying over the hurdles. 

“When I tell young athletes to go on YouTube and watch hurdlers, those are three I tell them to watch,” Hayes said.

But only Rollins has gone below the 12.50 mark this season, which in her case was well below.“Of the three, Brianna’s gone the fastest already, but Dawn and Sally both have global titles,”  Hayes had said, speaking before the final. “Brianna has nothing yet except for US titles and the American record. We’re kind of waiting to see how she handles international pressure. Judging from the first round, it looks like she handles it just fine.”

Rollins handled it well in the final too. She was the slowest to get off the blocks, but did not panic. 

Hurdling with panache, she caught up and overtook Pearson by the half-way stage before surging away to her first major international title. 

Rollins failed to make the Olympic team last year, a disappointment she has used for fuel.

“That was very motivating,” Rollins said in an interview. “Especially being that I was really young. I was like, I can compete against these girls. I just need to take these things serious.”Rollins said she was lacking something in practice despite her consistent collegiate success.

“Ask my coach, I hated practice; I used to quit,” she said. “If I started hurting, I used to just lay on the ground for a good long minute, no, three minutes, and not finish a workout.”

Rollins, who trains with US hurdler Queen Harrison under the former Clemson coach Lawrence Johnson, also attributes her big move this season to being healthier and able to lift weights more intensely instead of protecting an ailing hamstring or a fragile back.

Although she is a debutante at this level, she is well aware that the lower her time goes, the more questions will be posed.

“It’s very unfortunate, but this is what happens in our track and field environment,” she said. “It comes with it, I guess. Just try to block out all the negative energy and try to stay focused and stay positive.”

For the record, and it matters to Rollins enough to put it in her Twitter biography, her first name is pronounced BRY-anna, with the first syllable rhyming with fly.

Asked to explain how she became the person she is today, Rollins thought for a while.

“What made me me?” she said. “I do feel like I came from humbling grounds, so I think that’s why I am so calm. I came from a family with six younger brothers. We weren’t that fortunate as far as moneywise, so I just think coming from a family like that, it humbles you. It keeps you motivated and makes you want to do great things so that you don’t have to, later in your life, live like that again.” Hayes and others believe great things are definitely in reach.“The world record is possible,” Hayes said.

That is a rare thing to be able to say in women’s track, where the world records in the sprint events — from 100 to 400 — all date to the 1980s, as does Donkova’s record.Rollins said she has watched that race on YouTube.

“Just to see what a 12.21 looks like,” she said.

So, how did it look?“Pretty fast,” Rollins said with a grin. “Pretty fast.”