mielenkiintoinen juttu löytyi tuon Fasuban valmentajan kirjoittamana.
By Pierre-Jean, one of Fasuba's Coaches:
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My God i was scared. A couple of weeks ago, Olu had to pick visa, which turned out as usual as a safari. In two days, he had four times 10 hours car travels. He missed workouts and when he came back on Monday 01 May, he felt a big pain left hamstring. Olu had the clever idea to stop the workout the workout immediately. On Saturday 06 May, there was a race in Abuja and a week later the highly expected race with Galtin. I asked him to rest 2 days, during which he was threated with electric vibes by doctors. On 3rd day he was able to use his leg carefully, next day a light tempo, on 4th day he did 5 x 10 meters. The hamstring was a slight tear and it was better day after day. He did all this on the track and not on the grass in order to have a even flat surface. On 5th day, he competed in Abuja because there was only appearance fee and no place bonus, that means that he just had to line up to get his money. He really needed money to buy his ticket for Doha. So i told him run 60m and shut down; That's what he did and observers were amazed as he still ran 10.26. Zakari did 10.15. Rest on Sunday. On Monday 08 May the plan was to do some split runs followed by a 150m in 16-17sec , i planned carefully this workout but i know that it was a win or die risk. He coped well with the workout and was stunned to jog the 150m in 15.7. No pain on the hamstring, just a light stiff feeling. Tempo on Tuesday, then he calls me telling me that he has malaria and i shall come to Doha because he feels terrible and is scared to run against Gatlin. I told kitkat “bad luck will never end”. I took a flight the next day. When i arrived in Doha on Thursday morning, i had no room booked of course, the hotel guys ordered me to pay something like 1000$ to have a room, i said no thanks i’m going to find something else and i went to sleep on the floor in Olu’s room as usual). Olu hadn’t malaria, he just had fever and all the signs going with it. I also noticed that his spine was beding on the right side (consecutive to all the travels, and the origin of his neck, headache and hamstring problems). We went to the stadium to do a warm-up then i massed him, then dinner, then we found by chance the physio’s room at 9pm. There were russian speaking masseurs who were working with discus thrower Alekna. One of them agreed to mass Olu in spite of the room being closed so late. He did a great job and we get an other appointment the morning on the race.
During warm-up, he had fever and a sore throat and couldn’t breath normally because of the dry and sand-wind on the open warm-up pit in the middle of the desert. I told him that’s it’s good because his system is fighting against it and it makes the body stronger. At one point, Olu told me, Coach, i’m not feeling my body, let’s do a 60m easy (first time ever he asks me this). I said ok, i timed his easy strides and asked him after this How fast do you think you did?
- I don’t know, 6.4-6.5?
- No, 6.2... Now, let’s do one try at starting blocks and go to the call room!!!
I managed to get into the VIP area to film (i will send you the link of my video soon!). Olu had OK reaction time (0.141) and led Gatlin up to 70-80m. 9.85 for Gatlin (reaction time 0.164), 9.92 for Olu, matching Ogunkoya’s NR. We were told that Gatlin was flashed in 6.40 at 60m and Fasuba was probably faster than the WR. Back on the warm-up, Gatlin told his coach, Man, it was hard!
I refrained myself to explode of joy in order to make Olu focused, but this was really an actor performance for me. I was so happy that the hamstring was ok. In Doha, i only asked him once how his the hamstring, and then we never spoke again about it, i didn’t even asked him to show me it (i asked it AFTER the races though). I didn’t want him to think about it as long as this problem was disapearing by itself, so i didn’t talked about it. I was amazed that my little boy was now a 9.92 performer. And finally, i was concerned about satying focused for the final. I congratulated him when he came back after the heats, i told him that Justin and him were very close to the WR in that race, then we just relaxed, as did Gatlin. We did just few drills, Olu was worry to get cold (?!? We were in the desert). Then i went to the VIP again (how easy it was! Lol) I had troubles to film as my legs were shaking. The WR was going to be broke it was obvious. Then the guy on lane 8 wasn’t ready so they call them back, then Crawford did a false start, so they caled them back, i was really worry about the hamstring with all these false starts. Then for the real start, Galtin did 0.164, Olu 0.158. Not great. The accel was fabulous, Olu was clearly leading at 60m when Gatlin came back. Gatlin passed Olu at 80m who tensed up a little (shoulders backward). If he had stayed focused (well who could do so in this case!?) he would have run around 9.80. Anyway....
After the race, i went with Trevor to find who had the split times. Finally, an italian (?) coach showed us a piece of paper where it was written:
1.94 (1.06) 3.00 (0.87) 3.89 (0.87) 4.76 (0.81) 5.57 (0.81) 6.38 (0.81) 7.19 (0.83) 8.02 (0.84) 9.76 (0.90). For Olu they just had 6.35 for 60m, which is the best ever recorded behind Ben Johnson 6.33 in Seoul. The speed curve is very strange for Galtin i don’t trust it much, i will look at the video material i have. The wind was 1.7 and it has always been 1.7, i have video evidence of it, you can be sure that just after the race i looked at the wind gauge to see if the 9.77 (later revised at 9.76) was legal, and it shown +1.7. The confusion was coming from the speaker saying that the wind limit is 2.0. So people heard 2.0 and kept repeating it everywhere.
After the race, we all were in doping control which was endless... Olu was in terrible health after the race, during the night, headache, couldn’t breath, all his body was paining. I told him Now you know how it feels to have run 9.8 intensity, now imagine who painful it is for Galtin to have run 9.7!!!
As kitkat says, we haven’t done much speed endurance (problem of opportunity, he missed so much workouts with these travels). He has only done 3 or 4 workouts including +95% sprints longer than 100m, and only once a 150m at full speed. His weight training is still poor (people believe he spends his time in weight rooms) he does weights once or twice a week, he did the bench press PB on Monday with an unbelievable 85kg (187 lbs) lol.
The training system i have with Olu is similar to what Charlie uses i think, i mean short to long, etc... But if you saw the details of our training, you would probably see that they are many differences, as it is the case between the training of my own athletes. IMPORTANT : to our fellow athletes readers, i gave in this point our training between the injury and Doha, please do not use it if you have the same injury, it only worked on Olu because he has exceptional recovery abilities like all world class athletes, and this is NOT a recovery scheme guide, it would kill anybody else’s leg.
Olu was nothing but an ordinary sprinter until 2 days ago, thanks to the Russian masseur! I see a lot of people who don’t believe Olu’s time and doubt about the wind in Galtin’s race. I can tell you that the wind was blowing hard on the warm-up pit, but the competition track is kind of downstairs (under the ground level) so the wind doesn’t blow much inside. Nevertheless, the conditions were perfect with high temperature and w+1.7. Ato Boldon said that Olu won’t run a sub 10 again this year and this is a fluke. Well, nobody knows including me. If Olu fails we will have plenty of reasons to explain why (this year, he had to skip some workouts because the stadium was closed, or because it was night and no light in the stadium, sometimes no starting blocks, sometimes closed weigth room, always unplanned travels to get visa (each visa required 2 x 10 hours in car to get it), sometime have to go back again to the ambassy because the visa is not ready, Federation doesn’t care – see postcard from melbourne thread, Olu has very little money to train, he never get massage unless he’s in camp with me, etc), if he have other success, people will tell us again like we heard in Melbourne, well, he’s just gitfed. No, he works harder than the others.