The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

RIO de Janeiro, Brazil — Long before they arrived here for the 2016 Olympic Games, Maybelene Miller said they got a divine intervention that her daughter Shaunae Miller would become the women’s 400 metre champion.

So said, so done.

“We prayed so hard for this, fasted and prayed for it and she has a personal prophetess that is assigned to her, and she (prophetess) fasted and prayed for this and she told her (Shaunae) before she came here,” Miller said. “She said the Lord spoke to me and told me that you will win this race, this 400m, so she went into the race really comfortable that she was going to be victorious.”

Monday night, Miller said she was in the stands in the Olympic Stadium watching her daughter complete the prophecy when she stumbled across the finish line to hold off a late surge by American Allyson Felix in a personal best time of 49.44 seconds. Felix, who had ran away from Miller last year to win the title at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, China, had to settle for second in a season’s best of 49.51.

Jamaican Shericka Jackson, third place finisher at the Worlds, once again got the bronze in 49.85.

It was a complete turn around for the 22-year-old Miller, who four years ago in London, England, was unable to finish her preliminary heat of the 400m in her Olympic debut when she suffered a slight hamstring pull coming off the first curve and had to stop.

Monday, she exhumed that ghost by becoming only the second Bahamian to win a 400m gold, following national record holder Tonique Williams-Darling, who achieved the historic feat in 2004 in Athens, Greece.

Her mother, who was accompanied here by her husband, Shaun, an assistant coach on Team Bahamas, said she clearly remembered going to London and how disappointing it was to watch as Shaunae stopped and walked off the track.

“It’s my second time watching her at the Olympics, the first time she had to stop because of an injury, but this time it feels really good,” she said.

“After the race was over, I was like, ‘oh gee,’ I don’t know what was the outcome. I had to wait and watch the screen, and when the screen flashed up with her name. “I guess she properly heard when I made the loud scream, and maybe that was when she realise I did win this race.”

Shaunae Miller, in her post race interview with the local media in the mixed zone at the stadium, said she heard her mother screaming ‘get up, get up,’ as they advised her to start the celebration.

“At that time I was trying to tell her get up, get up, go get the flag, come get this flag because you did win this race,” her mother said. “Get the flag. She looked over, I was like, get up, you won, you won.”

From the start of the race, May, as she’s affectionately called, said she was a little jittery at the start of the gun.

“Well, I was a little nervous, actually I did not watch it,” she stressed. “I kept my face turned until I heard the gun shoot off and they started to run and then I turned back to the race and watched it from then. I just wanted to see the race in action as opposed to watch ing them in the blocks and all of that. It had me a little nervous.”

It’s not an abnormal thing for Miller to either be in the stands as a spectator or on the team in some type of management capacity. In fact, since she’s been competing as a junior athlete, her role as an official and now an executive of the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations has afforded her the opportunity to attend every single international meet her daughter competes in.

“The very, very first time she competed on an international scene in 2011, I was there and at World Youth Championships,” she recalled. “I literally was hot cold, nervous, sweating, you name it. But I am starting to get a little used to it now. I was not that nervous last night, but was a little more relaxed actually.”

The mother said she try to play a supporting role for her daughter, and that is why “most of the places she compete international I try to go.”

She also explained the reason. “Some people may not accept, but she likes when I am around, especially when she is competing. I am here not only as her mom, but as a motivator as well too, so she likes when I am around and so try to be there every international meets she competes at,” she explained.

In an interview with Track Alert, the leading Caribbean Track and Field website, Miller described the genesis of how her daughter got her introduction to the sport.

“As a child she was very quick through the house, you try to catch her, but she would bang the curve so swift, you couldn’t keep up with her” her mom said. “I told my husband that this girl is too fast, in the house running around these corridors, we need to get her in a open yard. We took her in an the open yard and we had her running around in the fields, and we realized, not only is she quick, she is fast, and so we decide, lets try her in a track meet.

“We took her to this track meet a Saturday, of course she was a late entry into the Star Trackers Track meet, and coach Charlton was able to let us get into the meet, and she was the overall winner of the under-9 age category, the 100m, 200m and long jump, without any training or nothing, only because her fast movements outside running around playing, we put het in. Then from there, the parents taught to themselves “we said, okay, we might have a little something right here. And from there on we kept running her in those events.”

At the time of her embryotic stage, her father coached her before he put her in the Striders Track Club, which was headed by Stephen Murray.

“We decided we going to try put her in a track club with a bunch of kids, and she started out with Striders track club with coach Stephen Murphy and from there she went to Club Monica under Dianne Woodside, Johnson now, and then from there, she came back to her dad and train with him (Shaun) until she went off to college.”

Even back then, as a seven-year-old running around, Miller said she knew she had a star in the making.

“Yes from that time, we knew we had a star in the making, she has being running from seven years old and she made national teams from under-9 up to this present day,” she reflected.

In her earlier days, Shaunae was a multi-event athlete, winning gold and silver medals at separate CAC Age Group Championships and now before she quit, Miller said her daughter has said she would like to try long jumping.

“I think that one of the things she jokingly telling her coach, she said ‘coach if I win the Olympics 400m, can I do a long jump,” her mother said. “I guess he properly ‘yes, sure you can do can do the long jump’ and she says ‘mommy, I am holding my coach to that’ and she won the Olympics, so I guess she is looking for a meet now to go and do the long jump.”

When she’s not competing, May said her daughter has followed her pattern.

“Quiet, she is a person who stays with herself more. I know she probably got that pattern after me,” she pointed out. “I just like to be by myself and I see that in her too. She just stays herself and sometimes she is home and you don’t even know she is home.”

Miller said those long nights they spent in prayers manifested itself on Monday night.

“I continue to praise and thank God all night because only through the grace of God she was able to win that last (Monday) night and the fact that the prophetess told her she was going to win, and we believed,” she stressed. “Once we believe the prophetess, we believe the word and once we did that, and you believe, so shall it be established and it was established last (Monday) night.”