A couple of weeks ago, French hurdler Pascal Martinot-Lagarde decided to sit out the second leg of the IAAF Diamond League meet at Shanghai Stadium in hopes of running at the Prefontaine Classic.
Martinot-Lagarde called the decision “the best entry of the season of my life.”
In his first race of the season after a left hamstring injury suffered at the Open Championships this past winter, Martinot-Lagarde edged world record-holder Aries Merritt to win the 110-meter hurdles for the second consecutive year at the Pre Classic.
He did this against a tough American group that included David Oliver, the bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, who finished third.
“This field is pretty much the World Championships,” Merritt said. “You may see these same people at worlds.”
Following a slow start, Martinot-Lagarde quickly found his stride to finish in a world-leading time of 13.06 seconds. Entering the race, Martinot-Lagarde was aiming for a sub-13.10, and he was ecstatic about his performance.
“This is my first race of the season, so before the race, I didn’t know how I was,” Martinot-Lagarde said. “I’m really happy to win my first race here. The weather is always good – last year, it was the same. I feel a power here. You feel it when you warm up, and when you warm up, you know you are going to do a good thing.”
Second-place Merritt ran a season-best 13.12, just .02 ahead of Oliver.
What Martinot-Lagarde and the rest of the field didn’t know was that Merritt almost pulled out of the race 30 minutes prior to the gun. During warmups, Merritt said, he didn’t feel right, and just before the race, he was on the trainers’ table trying to loosen his calf.
“It’s normal for the body to have a distraction, but it’s too bad because Merritt is a very strong athlete,” Martinot-Lagarde said. “Today, if he didn’t have this cramp before the race, it could have been a better race for everybody.”
When Merritt entered the interview tent, he showed media members the streaks of tape hidden beneath his right calf sleeve.
“To be honest, I almost scratched myself out of the race,” Merritt said. “In warmup, I felt my calf start to catch a cramp. Hence all the tape and all the stuff that’s on my calf. My leg was cramping on me and I was like, ‘No, this can’t be happening, not at Pre.’”
If it wasn’t the Prefontaine Classic, Merritt said, he would have likely pulled out.
“This race is so important for Nike and the sponsors that I have to run,” he said. “I tried to gut it out.”
Martinot-Lagarde was happy to be back in action. Merritt was relieved just to finish the race.
“My start was excellent,” Merritt said. “But I really tried to not push it as hard because of my calf. And then when I saw Pascal coming up on me, I was like ‘Jesus Christ, just got to finish.’ But there’s way more there. I was really happy to finish the race and not make my calf worse than it already is.”
Both runners will be looking forward to a rematch in Beijing.
“I like, big, big competition,” Martinot-Lagarde said. “At the world championships, I think it will be almost be the same competitors at the start line. It’s a good thing. We like competition.”
