AUSTIN, Texas “”mdash; After his race Saturday, freshman hurdler
Brandon Johnson sat by himself, hands covering his face,
crying.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Not on a national stage.
Not in front of his hometown crowd.
Not in Texas.
During the preliminary round of the 400-meter hurdles at the
NCAA Track and Field Championships, Johnson failed to qualify for
the finals. He ran 51.24 seconds to finish fourth in his heat and
17th out of 26.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” Johnson
said. “Everything I accomplished this year is tainted.
I’m not satisfied with the way it ended.”
Second in the nation in the event, Johnson could have challenged
for the national title had he reached Saturday’s finals.
Instead, after leading the first 100m of the race, he fell off the
pace in the last half.
Teammate Jonathan Williams was in the same heat and finished
second but did not advance, either, barely missing the cutoff.
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Williams
said of Johnson. “He was behind me around the turn, and I
thought he was going to pick it up in the end.”
Unfamiliar to the championship atmosphere, Johnson didn’t
have the experience needed to remain calm enough to come from
behind.
“I really can’t pinpoint what happened during the
race,” Johnson said. “All I know is that some people
said I choked, but I don’t think I choked. I just
didn’t do all that I could do. I didn’t give it all
that I had.”
A Texas native, this was also the first time Johnson had been
back home to compete as a collegian. Though the Bruins traveled
there earlier in the season for the Texas Relays, he was hurt at
the time and couldn’t participate.
This was the weekend he was supposed to show off to his friends
and family.
Needless to say, it didn’t go according to plan.
“I came here with big pressure on me,” he said.
“I really wanted to win. I know I should have won, and I
could have won.”
“It’s a horrible feeling.”
Though Johnson had the second-fastest time coming into the
weekend (he was behind high school rival Kerron Clement of Florida,
the eventual winner of the event), the hurdles is still a
relatively new event for the freshman.
Mainly a pure sprinter before coming to UCLA, Johnson only
started to focus on the event within the past few months.
Then with the injury that forced him to sit out most of the
regular outdoor season, Johnson didn’t show what he could do
until the Pac-10 Championships, where he shocked the crowd with a
blistering 48.85 time.
“The hurdles are still such an enigma to him,”
sprints coach Tony Veney said. “He’s still trying to
figure it all out.”
“When he feels that he’s on, it just buoys his
confidence, and when he feels that he’s off, he panics a
little bit because he doesn’t know what to do
next.”
“In order for him to be successful, he’s got to take
it to the top notch, and if he does, he’s fine.”
Johnson agrees.
To him, it’s a matter of mastering the technical aspect of
the hurdles.
“As a freshman, I’m still trying to get used to it
all,” he said. “So if during the race, something
doesn’t feel right, I don’t know why it doesn’t
feel right. I’m so confused because I haven’t run it
enough.”
That lack of experience is part of the reason Johnson has
decided to forgo the upcoming Olympic Trials and concentrate on
Junior Nationals instead. Though his Pac-10 time was an automatic
qualifier for next month’s trials in Sacramento, Johnson used
this weekend as a determining factor as to whether he was indeed
ready for that scale of competition.
After Friday’s performance, he decided he
wasn’t.
But Johnson ““ hard on himself, almost to a fault ““
isn’t ready to give up yet.
“I’m going to take this all in stride,” he
said with a determined look in his eye, “because I
won’t ever let this happen to me again.”
And after watching his woeful post-race reaction, it’s
hard not to believe him.