SUPER SPECIAL JAHEEL HYDE

What can one say about Jaheel Hyde that wouldn’t sound like an understatement, especially after his performance at the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China. Many will remember the date August 23, 2014 as the day Jaheel Hyde became the first Jamaican male youth to win a sprint hurdles gold medal at the Youth Olympics, the first youth athlete to break 13 seconds in the 110m hurdles, and perhaps the first ever to hold a World Youth, World Junior and Youth Olympic title simultaneously. This is absolutely incredible, even if this is only the second edition of the Youth Olympics.

The last year has been an incredible for the super-talented 17-year-old Wolmerian whose astonishing goal in last year’s Manning Cup final against Jamaica College almost helped his team secure the schoolboy title. It took the talents of another talented Jamaican, Junior Flemming, to deny Hyde and Wolmer’s. On the track however, Hyde has been a juggernaut.

In Donetsk, Hyde won the sprint hurdles title in 13.13 seconds running into a strong headwind. He missed the world record by 0.01 seconds. He was the first Jamaican to accomplish that feat. Months later at Champs 2014, Hyde destroyed the national junior record set the year before by Kingston College’s Omar McLeod in the 400 metre hurdles, taking almost half-a-second off the latter’s time to clock a world-leading 49.49 seconds. For good measure he cops the sprint hurdles title at champs as well.

He was far from done. Running on what must have been tired legs, Hyde travelled to Eugene, Oregon in early August and took on the world’s best junior hurdles and destroyed them lowering his own world-leading time to 49.28, winning comfortably while looking around for his rivals. He flies from Eugene to China where he obliterates the sprint hurdles record that had just eluded him a year earlier. Oh, and lest I forget, he is also the CARIFTA Games champion.

I remember watching his dad Lenny Hyde as he displayed magical talents playing for Clarendon College back in the 1970s. I remember how his sublime football skills drove fear into the hearts of opponents and made the Manning Cup champions, Calabar, look like the schoolboys they were in the Olivier Shield final. Fast forward almost four decades and it’s like watching ‘Teacha Hyde” do it all over again, this time moreso on the track.

There is no doubt Jaheel is talented but what impresses me most about him is what his dad reveals about his work ethic and his determination. The elder Hyde reveals that it is his son who wakes him at 5 each morning and drags him out to Stadium East where he channels and hones his incredible talent into what we are seeing today.

One gets the feeling that once he decides which event he wants to focus on we could be in for many years of extra special performances. It wasn’t that long ago that we saw the burgeoning talents of one Usain St. Leo Bolt on show. We could very well be seeing another incredible talent emerging before our very eyes. Talent, I daresay, that could eventually eclipse the significant accomplishments of the man we now called Legend even though that would take some doing.

With Hyde though, you always get the feeling that he is never fully extended. You get the feeling that he always has a lot more left in store. Which ever of the hurdles he chooses there is one thing we do know for certain and that is he will excel.