Posted: June 15, 2006

Athletics: Fasuba: In Search Of The Sub-10 'feeling'

By Bob Ramsak
© 2006 TRACK PROFILE Report, all rights reserved

It took Olusoji Fasuba exactly 9.85 seconds to permanently etch himself into track & field’s history books. But in the month since he found himself tied with former world record holder Leroy Burrell as the sixth fastest man ever, the 21-year-old Nigerian has also learned that his act in a Qatari desert will be a tough one to follow.

Just over a month ago, Fasuba finished second when Justin Gatlin equalled the 100 meter world record of 9.77 seconds at the Super Grand Prix in Doha, Qatar. Fasuba suddenly joined some fast company: all but one of the five men who have covered the distance faster than his 9.85 did so while setting or equalling the world record in the sport’s marqee event. On that warm desert evening, Fasuba replaced the legendary Frank Fredericks as African record holder, a continental standard that had stood for nearly a decade. And six weeks shy of his 22nd birthday, Fasuba became the youngest to ever run 9.85 or faster.

“I went to Doha just trying to be in the first three,” Fasuba said. “I wasn’t going there thinking I was going to run sub-10. I didn’t really put my mind on that. So maybe that’s why it came.”

He wasn’t alone with such a pre-race analysis. Fasuba brought a 10.09 personal best from 2004 to the race, and despite near-perfect conditions and tailwinds pushing the legal allowable limits, that he would run his first career sub-ten second performance wasn’t the conventional wisdom of the day. That he would ultimately improve by nearly a quarter of a second was a notion that certainly nobody entertained. Fasuba certainly didn’t, but not because he didn’t think he was capable of such a leap.

“I wasn’t really expecting it because at that time, my body was giving some funny signals which I didn’t expect at that time,” he admitted. “I was very stiff. During my warm up I was feeling terrible. But when I put on my spikes I was feeling okay, so there were two really big contradictions I didn’t understand. So I was very, very scared. I was hoping that I wouldn’t get injured. But after my first race, I saw that I could push harder.”

The first race was a notable 9.93 personal best, but still not an indication of what was to come in the final.

“I won’t say that I knew I was in that kind of shape because two weeks [earlier] I had run pretty fast in training so I knew that I was capable, within that range, to run fast. A week before the race though, I got injured a little, which slowed me down.”

Supplanting Fredericks as the continent’s fastest is a responsibility Fasuba doesn’t take lightly. “It means a lot to me,” he said. “I went in there to get first three, and I got more than that. I got both the Nigerian record and the African record, and second place. It means a lot. A real lot.”

“After the race, I felt like, ‘whoa, I could go more.’ But the next day my body told me ‘you’ve overheated. You’ve got to rest.’ I thought, ‘whoa, a nine is this tough?’ "

But since then, slowed by minor injuries, illness and plain bad luck with cool late spring weather, Fasuba has quickly learned that keeping fast company won’t be the overnight leap he may have expected after his dash in Doha.

He followed up with a slowish 10.33 victory in cool conditions in Hengelo, a race he remembers mostly for the chill in the Dutch city. “I was so lucky that I didn’t get injured there,” he said. Rapidly decreasing temperatures between his warm-up and the race, along with a pair of false starts, didn’t help.

At the Golden League opener in Oslo less than a week later, Fasuba simply couldn’t find his rhythm, and failed to qualify for the final after finishing fourth in his heat in 10.19.

His follow-up efforts weren’t helped by an infection caused by an insect bite soon after Doha that left him with a nearly unimaginable golf ball-sized abscess on his chest. Despite intense local pains, Fasuba, remarkably, chose not to seek medical assistance immediately. Unable to train properly, still recuperating from the infection and just fatigued, he nonetheless completed his spring schedule with a 10.23 win in Lille last weekend.

Despite some relatively quick performances in recent years that clearly illustrated his potential –he was the lead-off for Nigeria’s bronze-winning 400 meter relay quartet at the 2004 Olympics— Fasuba didn’t really emerge on the international stage until earlier this year when just 10 days after finishing fifth in the 60 meters at the World Indoor Championships, he took second behind world record holder Asafa Powell at the Commonwealth Games. The biggest difference in his approach since late last year, Fasuba said, is that he began a weight training regimen for the first time in his career.

“In my training before I didn’t go to the gym, because I was so scared to go to the gym,” he explained, before offering a further explanation, a rationalization delivered with a smile and a laugh. “Because when I went to the gym before, the women were lifting more than me. I said ‘whoa, they can’t beat me in the 100 so I don’t think I need to be going to the gym.’”

Short explosive sprints were added to his regimen as well, along with work on technical aspects of the first and second halves of his race.

There was a substantial bit of confusion over the timing and wind readings in Doha, both immediately after the race, and again three days later, when the timing company, Tissot Timing, admitted an error that ultimately cost Justin Gatlin sole ownership of the world record. On the evening of the event, the initial wind reading was given at 1.7 meters per second, then revised to 2.0 m/s, the maximum allowed for record purposes, and changed yet again to 1.7, leading some to question the results. Among the non-believers is Powell himself, who suggested last week that the performances may have been wind-aided.

Fasuba admits that he’s not a human “wind gauge” but firmly believes that the performances were legal.

“There was a pretty good distance between the first, second, third and fourth finishers,” he said, suggesting that above-legal aiding winds would have propelled the entire field to faster times.

Not open to debate, Fasuba explained, is that his body is not quite yet prepared to handle the rigor that consistent performances in the 9.8 to 9.9 range demand.

“After the race, I felt like, ‘whoa, I could go more.’ But the next day my body told me ‘you’ve overheated. You’ve got to rest.’ I thought, ‘whoa, a nine is this tough?’ For three days it was terrible. I was sick, my temperature was rising. My body wasn’t used to it. But I believe my body wants it, so it has to get used to it.”

“I keep learning every year,” he continued. “I believe right now I still need the feeling of [sub-10s] to get used to it. Right now I can’t predict that I’m going to run this or I’m going to run that.” Running so fast, he said, was “A very, very good feeling. But after some days it really knocked me out. So I need to need to run more of them to get used to it.”

After a brief break, Fasuba will continue on what he hopes will be that road to consistency. He will compete next at the Athletissima meet in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 11, where he will again face Gatlin. Outings in Athens (July 3) and Rome (July 14) are possibilities as well.

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