Jaguar ready to pounce

Despite his poor show at the World Indoors, outdoor champion Kirani James will be a force in London

In just seven months, Kirani James of Grenada went from best to worst in a championship final.  Last August in Daegu, South Korea, James chased down the reigning champion, LaShawn Merritt, in the homestretch to become the youngest men’s 400-metre world champion in history at 18.

On March 10 in Istanbul, James finished sixth and last in the 400 at the world indoor championships after failing to overcome starting in Lane 1 on a banked track, an assignment he brought on himself by losing his semifinal.

“It’s always a learning experience,” James said the next day. “Everything from the standpoint of the tactics to, you know, not trying to get Lane 1, which will be the case when I run next time. There’s a lot of stuff that comes into play, not just what you see at the meets, but also the intangibles that a lot of people don’t see. We have to do a better job of controlling that environment.”

James, with his precocity and back story, should be a focal point at his first Olympics this summer in London. He has made the team from Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island with about 100,000 residents, where he grew up in poverty and is now a symbol of national possibilities.

“This is, to my mind, the most important event that ever happened to our country, even more important than Christopher Columbus landing,” James Clarkson, Grenada’s police commissioner, said when authorising celebrations after James’s Daegu victory.

James has delicate features and likes to joke. He also has a quiet dignity and a blend of sensitivity and yes-sir courtesy.

But the men’s 400 should be a particularly rough neighbourhood in the London Games, with Merritt and Jeremy Wariner, who led a US sweep of the podium in the 2008 Beijing Games. James said that if Merritt runs in London, after an International Olympic Committee policy barring athletes who had served drug suspensions from the next Olympics was overturned, it will not be an issue for him.

“All I can control is my performances,” James said.   James, unlike Merritt, 25, and Wariner, 28, is a full-time student, a business major at the University of Alabama, where he won two NCAA titles in the 400 before turning professional last year.

“It’s quite hectic balancing,” James said. “Some people say being a student-athlete is hard, but being a student professional athlete is harder.

“Because of my visa status, I have to take full courses. I’m in the process of trying to change that.”
Renaldo Nehemiah, a former star hurdler who is James’ manager, said James would soon be applying for a non-immigrant visa that would allow him to cut his course load. But Nehemiah said James’ status would probably not change before the end of this academic year in May. James will also have to manage his celebrity role and sponsorship obligations in Grenada.

The pace is taking its toll, and it seemed symbolic, if not quite conclusive, that James yawned three times as he prepared to settle into the starting blocks for the 400 final in Istanbul. James said he had yawned before other races. But Nehemiah and Harvey Glance, James’ coach and mentor, hope the Istanbul disappointment will serve as a cautionary tale.

“If we don’t prepare the way we need to prepare, then it will be a one-year wonder,” Glance said.
James grew up in a poor neighbourhood in the coastal town of Gouyave called Gun Battle. It is better known in Grenada as “the town that never sleeps,” which is not exactly what a would-be champion requires. Glance, a former Olympic sprinter for the United States who coached James at Alabama, said: “When he tells you Gouyave is a city that never sleeps, it’s Las Vegas 24-7. Imagine a little small town like that. They just go. There’s fish fries, music being played, just night life. I mean, the lights are on and never go off.”

He added: “For him to stay focused and to have a dedication and a dream to be somebody and come out of there, it spoke volumes about not just him but his family to keep him grounded and keep him out front. He was destined to be special, and I think that he had a lot of protection within the city to make sure it was kind of like, Hands off.”

James’ father, Dorani, played basketball for Grenada, and James’ older brother Gary was a talented athlete. “He was maybe more talented than Kirani in terms of all the sports he can do,” said Albert Joseph, James’ boyhood coach in Gouyave.

James played basketball but realised early, with Joseph’s help, that track was his best chance for a college scholarship in the United States. James said it began to seem possible at age 13, when he won the 400 and finished second in the 200 at the Caribbean Union of Teachers Games in St Lucia.

“The stereotype with the Jamaicas and the Trinidads is that they always do good,” James said. “But I realised that even though I’m from a small island, I did that good and I can compete with the best of the Caribbean and ultimately the best in the world. I mean, from there my whole mind-set just changed.”

It helped that Grenada had a world champion in the 400: Alleyne Francique, who won the men’s indoor title in 2004 and 2006 while based in the United States.

“He’s the one who put us on the map, so I really appreciate his efforts,” James said.
James is not Francique’s only successor. Rondell Bartholomew, 21, who is based in the United States, also reached the men’s 400 final in Daegu.

Some coaches, including Jacques Borlee of Belgium, whose sons compete in the 400, have suggested that James may need to modify his technique if he wants to reach his potential and avoid injury. They focus on his left foot, which strays outward.

Glance said: “The first time I met Kirani, he walked over to me from one of his age-group track meets. Of course the first thing in my mind as a coach is, ‘Wow, look at that left foot!’ Well then I realised that that is just the way it is. There’s a cardinal rule: If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it. That’s always been my philosophy.

“I will never forget when Michael Johnson first came on the scene. He had this swayback running style and everyone said: ‘Hey we’ve got to change that. If we change that, he’ll run so much better.’”

“By the end of his story, he’s the fastest 400-metre guy who ever lived,” Glance added.
Johnson’s world record, 43.18 seconds set in 1999, still looks impregnable. Unlike Wariner and Merritt, James has yet to break 44 seconds. His best, established in Zurich last year, is 44.36.
James said his left-foot issue came from his father’s side of the family.

“Our hips face inwards, so our knees face inwards, and the leg sways outside -- just to explain that in a nutshell,” he said. “But there are little things that I have to work on, like wrist movement and stuff like that. But to make any significant changes? I don’t think I have to, and I just have to believe in my training and believe in myself and believe in my coaching.”

James is a whippet in an event with its share of imposing physiques. At 6 feet 3 inches and 175 pounds, he is much more like Wariner than Merritt. Although Johnson ran like a robot, James’ nickname is the Jaguar.

“He’s got what I call very quiet and sneaky speed,” Glance said.  Any element of surprise would seem to be gone, however. James is a high-profile champion, at least outdoors on a 400-metre track, which is how the Olympic race is run.