FELIX SÁNCHEZ will wear his flashing red wristband for the last time tonight in the final of the men’s 400 metres hurdles here. Either that or he may have to carry it around in his luggage for a long time to come.
For the past four years, Sánchez has worn the wristband as a penance for his failure to progress beyond the semi-finals of the Olympic Games in Sydney four years ago.
The wristband was a souvenir from Sydney. “Every race I turn it on before I run, then I turn it off after,” Sánchez said. “It’s like my fire still burning from Sydney. It’s been my bondage all these years. It’s a constant reminder of how I failed. I said I was going to wear it until the next Olympics, to remind myself that I didn’t make the final. I don’t want that ever to happen again.”
Unbeaten for three years, it would be a travesty if Sánchez, 26, did not return a gold medal for the Dominican Republic here. He is his country’s Paula Radcliffe, their Hicham El Guerrouj, but will it be a British or a Moroccan outcome this evening?
“It has been going through my mind for the last four years, just thinking about getting back and redeeming myself,” Sánchez said. “I need to take off that bracelet.”
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Sánchez’s run of victories over the hurdles stands at 40. This has been a season in which all the best winning streaks, except his, have ended. El Guerrouj lost in Rome, Maria Mutola in Lausanne, Christian Olsson in Stockholm. Sánchez, though, has not been made to feel uneasy. “My streak helps me,” he said. “It is embedded in the mind of my competitors. I am in my competitors’ heads.
“But I am a realist. I think all the time about when I am going to lose, to who, and where am I going to make a mistake. I know one day it’s going to happen, I’m a realist. And I would rather not be so dominant then we could push each other and bring the best out of each other.” Sánchez’s best time of 47.25sec is considerably faster than any run by his present rivals and he has broken 48sec on many occasions.
“A few coaches on the circuit jokingly say that if I went out and ran 49.1, my competitors would run 49.2,” Sánchez said. “It is a bit of an exaggeration but it seems to be the case that they are running off me rather than running their own race. But I don’t plan to run a 49-anything, so we won’t test that theory.” Such confidence from the man who has won the past two world titles.
As Sánchez progresses, it is becoming increasingly common to hear the question: “How many races was it Ed Moses went unbeaten?” The answer is 122. But first things first. The idea of Sánchez accomplishing it will remain in the fairystory for some time before we can start to think of it coming to life. He said he would start to think about it himself when he gets past 50 successive victories.
Now trained in Los Angeles by a British coach, Avondale Mainwaring, Sánchez was born in New York of Dominican parents. His mother and father separated when he was a toddler, his father returning to the Republic while his mother moved to San Diego, where Sánchez was raised. “My father’s side of the family live in the Dominican Republic, my mother’s side in San Diego,” he said.
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Asked why he competes for the Dominican Republic rather than the United States, Sánchez cites his parents. “I always felt I was full-blood Dominican, not half-American and half-Dominican,” he said. However, but for breaking his wrist while wrestling, Sánchez may never have become an athlete.
“I had previously played baseball and, in the tenth grade in high school, I tried out for wrestling in November-December time, just for something to do,” he said. “I broke my wrist and couldn’t trial for the baseball team. The track coach said I didn’t need a hand to run, that I could run with a broken wrist.” Out of that a world champion emerged, and tonight, perhaps, an Olympic champion.