How years learning in company of Usain Bolt earned Zharnel Hughes golden shot
Zharnel Hughes aims to headline the Fast Show this weekend using tricks of the trade learned in the company of Usain Bolt.
The British record holder has arrived at the World Championships the quickest man on the planet this year. It gives him a chance of emulating Linford Christie’s triumph in Stuttgart 30 years ago and capping a summer in which he has rewritten the British record books.
Having eclipsed the national bests set by Christie (100m) and John Regis (200m) in the 1990s, Hughes’ next goal is to become the first male British sprinter to win a world medal since Darren Campbell in 2003.
His confidence comes not just from recent results but the 12 years spent with Bolt’s Racers Track Club in Jamaica under the watchful eye of coach Glen Mills.
“When I first got there Usain didn’t know who I was,” said Hughes. “I was just a 16-year old from Anguilla. Skinny looking, like a tooth pick.
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“I suddenly found myself in the presence of greatness and needed to pinch myself. When I saw the guys I was training amongst I was star struck."
Hughes pictured between Bolt and Justin Gatlin in his breakthrough 200m race at the 2015 World Championships. He finished fifth (Getty)For four years Hughes kept his head down and worked hard, observing every day what Bolt and the likes of Yohan Blake and Warren Weir were doing and how they were able to keep pushing on.
He had left Anguilla, which lacked a proper track, with a best of 10.4 seconds on grass. Within a year he was down to 10.12.
“Just being amongst those guys pushed me a lot,” he said. “I needed to step my game up in order to run fast.”
Hughes, behind Bolt in Beijing eight years ago, is now world leader over 100 metres (Getty)His breakthrough came in 2015 when he went to the Worlds in Beijing and finished fifth behind Bolt in the 200m.
That was the summer Bolt properly acknowledged him for the first time, when they finished 1-2 in a race in New York.
“That's when I opened his eyes,” is how Hughes puts it. “He noticed I was pretty quick. He was like ‘who is this young boy?’
Hughes took 200m gold at European Championships in Munich last summer (Abdulhamid Hosbas/Getty Images)“Since then I think he has always held me in high regard. I'm pretty sure now he sees my performances. He's proud of me, I guess.”
Bolt retired in 2017 and the following year Hughes became European champion over 100m. He might have added an Olympic medal in Tokyo but false started in the final.
So he is here in Budapest still searching for his first global individual medal and quietly convinced his time is now.
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Noah Lyles has predicted that he will run a 9.65secs 100m in Budapest (Getty Images)Others will question that, notably Olympic champion Fred Kerly, Akani Simbine and Noah Lyles, the flamboyant American who predicts he will run 9.65.
Hughes, 28, says they are welcome to think what they want. And he means it. For Mills has worked on toughening him up mentally.
He always tells me: “What the mind believes, the body can achieve”.
The British 100m final, sent off in monsoon conditions, was a chance for Hughes to trial that theory. He executed a near perfect race.
But now comes the real test. He says he is ready. We will know soon enough.
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