The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

ZURICH, Switzerland — It has been two years since coach Gary Evans took over as the coach of quarter-miler Steven Gardiner and the American could not be more pleased with the progress of the Bahamian native from Abaco on and off the track and field scene.

In that space of time, Evans has seen Gardiner become the first Bahamian quarter-miler to crack the 44-second barrier, lowering the national record all the way to 43.87 seconds in Doha, Qatar on May 4.

Now Evans is hoping that Gardiner will ascend the podium today as the first Bahamian male athlete to win the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s Diamond League Final.

Gardiner, who turns 23 on September 12, will be the only Bahamian competing in the first of the two Diamond League Finals here at the Weltklasse Zurich at the Letzigrund Stadium.

On Friday, quarter-miler Shaunae Miller-Uibo and high jumper Donald Thomas will compete in the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, Belgium.

After failing to advance through the race when he slipped at the start at last year’s final, Gardiner will be back running out of lane four again and Evans said the expectations is for the Bahamian to get through the race as quickly and as smoothly as he can.

He will have among his contenders American Fred Kerley and Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith.

“We are just looking to win. We’re not looking to break a world record. We are just looking for a basic win,” Evans told The Tribune during their final training session yesterday.

“We’re just looking to run a smart race and not give it up like we did last year from the initial fall from the blocks that he had. So we just want to run a smart race.

“I told him whether it’s 45, he still wins. As long as he crosses first, or if it’s 43, he still crosses the line first. So we’re just going to run a smart race and secure first place.”

This will only be Gardiner’s second race since he came off an injury back in June. On August 22 at the 9th Kamila Skolomowska Memorial Meetin Chorzow in Poland, Gardiner proved that he was back, easily taking the tape in 44.42.

Evans said his progress has been impressive, so he feels Gardiner is right where he was before he went down with a slight tear in his right upper hamstring.

That was on the third stop of the Diamond League tour in Stockholm, Sweden where Gardiner came off the third in third place and he stumbled heading into the home stretch, so as a precaution, he eased up and breezed across the finish line in eighth place in 23.35.

“We worked out for a while to see whether or not we will continue the season and how serious the injury was,” Evans said. “It was only about six per cent, so he was pretty bad. But he went back to pool work, stationary bike and we stayed on the grass for about two weeks before he got into that race in Poland. Before he went to Poland, he was only on the track for about two weeks.

“So he went to Greece and took care of it. He did the rehab, came back and did a successful follow-up session with his trainer and me as a coach and he came back and ran very well. I didn’t expect to see a 44.4, even with him shutting him down. We were just going to see where he was at and decide if we were going to shut it down. But after seeing the 44.4 and 32 flat in the 300m in practice, we decided to go for it here.”

Looking at his progress in his return from the injury, Evans said Gardiner is on the verge of accomplishing something big here. “After watching him break the national record in Doha, this kid is hungry,” Evans stressed. “Sometimes he feels he doesn’t deserve the respect that he deserves. But he came into the fall and basically told me that he wants to be the best in both the 400 and the 200m.

“I said you’re a long way off in the 200, so our focus over the first half of the season was to work on some 200s to increase his speed. For me, if you are going to break the world record, you will have to be able to run sub 20s in the 200m. Not that many 400 guys have ran that fast. So once he got down to that time, I figured he would be able to run 44-low, 43-high 400ms this year.”

If there’s one improvement that Gardiner has made under Evans, it’s his increase for running the longer races in practice and that has been the difference in his approach to this year’s season and even as he prepares for the trek towards to the IAAF World Championships next year in Doha, Qatar and the 2020 Olympic Games in Toyko, Japan.

Does this mean that Gardiner will be attempting the 200/400m double as Miller-Uibo did a year ago at the IAAF Championships in London, England?

“We’re going to be safe for the next two years, Evans said. “That’s something me, him and his manager will have to sit down and discuss. I don’t want to make the athletes uncomfortable. I don’t want him to do something that he will regret. So we will sit down and discuss with him and see where he goes from there.

“But I think he can be a great 400/200m runner. But you have to respect that event because the guys in the 200m are not just going to let a 400m runner step down and take the race away from them. So we have to probably try to take a few licks before we become great at it. But we will work on it.

“Our focus right now is this Diamond League Final and then getting him ready for the World Championships and the Olympics over the next two years. He’s an exceptional runner and a great guy to be coaching, so I’m not going to push him any further than he needs to go right now.”

Although he’s now the face of the Bahamas men’s 400m on the international scene, Gardiner is hoping to add some more hardware to the IAAF World Championship silver medal that he won last year in London. At the rate he’s going, Evans said he’s confident that he will be back on the podium.