Coach Stewart shifts gears: Speed the new priority for Clarke

Okeile Stewart, coach of Olympic Games 400-metre hurdles finalist Roshawn Clarke, said he is placing a lot of emphasis on improving his speed this season as he looks to lower his times in the event.

Clarke, the World Under-20 record holder in the event, recently turned heads with an impressive display of raw pace when he clocked 6.62 seconds to win his heat of the men’s 60 metres at the Camperdown Classic, a performance that underlined the new direction in his training.

“Right now we are just trying to get some speed because, if you realise, most of the people at the top end in the 400m hurdles are 44-seconds-deep athletes in the 400 metres,” Stewart said. “If you look at Rai Benjamin, he is capable of going 44 seconds and 19-point, and I believe Clarke has the capacity to reach that level of speed.”

The 21-year-old Clarke, who was a semi-finalist at the last World Championships in Tokyo, owns a personal best of 47.34 in the 400m hurdles. The former Camperdown High standout has also demonstrated impressive flat speed, with lifetime bests of 44.98 in the 400m and 20.69 in the 200m.

Stewart noted that the shift towards speed development is both strategic and timely this year.

“If we are not as technically correct over the hurdles, then we might as well just be fast. It is pretty much the same focus; we are just getting faster,” he said.

According to the coach, Clarke’s sprinting background is not widely known, but it is now being leveraged to enhance his hurdling.

“A lot of people wouldn’t have known that Clarke was a sprinter before he became a hurdler. We moved him to the longer event to keep him healthy, and we realised he could do more turnover work, so we are using that to our advantage,” Stewart stated. “Over the last few years he has got close to medals, making finals and finishing fourth, so now we want to take the next step.”

With this season viewed as a developmental phase, Stewart pointed out that it provides the ideal window to address areas that were previously secondary while Clarke matured physically and managed injuries.

“This year gives us an opportunity to work on things we didn’t get the chance to focus on earlier, because he was younger and we were trying to keep him healthy. Now we can emphasise speed and see where that puts us,” Stewart said.

Stewart also added that Clarke has yet to win a senior global medal in his career and therefore, they are targeting this year’s Commonwealth Games to achieve this feat.

“The Commonwealth Games is another championship for us because he doesn’t have a senior title under his belt, and what a good place to start,” Stewart said. “There is also the Ultimate Championships at the end of the year, and, of course, the Diamond League, which is part of the professional circuit.”