Steve Solomon ready for gold medal-sized challenge at London world championships
STEVE Solomon is in awe of 2016 Rio Olympic 400m gold medallist Wayde van Niekerk, but that goes out the window when he takes on the South African at the London world championships.
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STEVE Solomon was in shock about what was happening on his television screen.
The 2012 London Olympic finalist in the 400m was watching the Rio final and he couldn’t believe what South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk was doing in lane eight.
“I was in shock,” Solomon explains.
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“I was sitting there with my dog and I just felt this energy overwhelm me and I couldn’t move.
“Just fathoming how fast 43.03 was. Watching the clock as he was coming down the home straight and thinking this was just outrageous.
“Then you see where Kirani (James) and (LaShawn) Merritt were in relation to him and how he held his composure.
“I’m young and naive and I haven’t been around athletics long enough to really put a lot of weighting behind the comment that that may have been the greatest run we’ve ever seen but that’s how it felt to me at the time.”
Rather than be daunted by coming up against van Niekerk, Solomon is simply happy to be even having a conversation about it after what has been a tough five years since his London heroics.
Back then he was a nobody who came from nowhere to make the Olympic final after running a personal best 44.97 sec in the semi-finals.
It was one of the great stories for Australia to come out of the Games and Solomon then moved to the US to take up a college scholarship at Stanford University.
That’s where things started to fall apart with injury after injury eventually resulting in hamstring surgery after the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
He tried to get back for Rio but missed qualifying by just four one-hundredths of a second.
In June he clocked his fastest time in five years at a meet in California, running 45.19 sec to qualify for the London world championships.
STEVE SOLOMON SUCCESS ✔@stevesolo10 wins his 5th national title over 400m in 46.66 secs #AAC17 #SUMMERofATHS pic.twitter.com/odSNW1zLCr
— Athletics Australia (@AthsAust) April 1, 2017
The only three times he’d ever run faster was at the 2012 London Olympics.
“I haven’t been at a major championships for a while so I’ve missed out on the opportunities to race against the big boys,” Solomon, 24, says.
“But this is where I feel confident, where I feel comfortable, where I feel hungry for success.
“I set my expectations high. I know the 400 is in a different place than it was four or five years ago when I was last in London but I think I’m a different athlete as well.
“There’s no reason why I can’t push for a position in the final and then going forward from that I now have a new confidence, that I probably didn’t have in the London Olympic final.
“I know that I deserve to be there now and I know I can compete at that level.”
He believes van Niekerk’s shattering of Michael Johnson’s world record, which had been set in 1999, would help others like himself raise their own expectations.
“Michael Johnson was untouchable and no-one had come marginally close to his time of 43.18 and growing up that was the time I had in my head,” Solomon said.
“Then to see Wayde in one race just smoke that time like it was just amateur was just unbelievable.
“It took a few days for it to decompress in me and to realise this is where the new standard is, this is where we’ve got to go and this is the guy who’s going to help bringing us all up in the same way that when Michael Johnson was running there were plenty of guys running 43s.
“Wayde has helped set a new benchmark in the 400m, he’s inspiring things that a lot of us didn’t think were possible so we’re attacking the race and attacking training with new thoughts that it’s possible now and it’s time for other athletes, including myself, to get out there and get it done as well.”
The heats of the men’s 400m are on tomorrow night (Saturday AEST 7.45am) with the final on Wednesday morning (6.50am AEST).
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Originally published as Steve Solomon ready for gold medal-sized challenge at London world championships
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