Taylor Advances to World Semi-Finals in 400m Hurdles

Last Sunday a national television audience of nearly 2.5 million watched two-year Harvard track co-captain Brenda Taylor ‘01 place third in her preliminary heat of the 400-meter intermediate hurdles at the 2001 IAAF World Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Edmonton. After the race, an interview given by ABC reporter Todd Harris gave the general public its first close look at Taylor, collegiate track and field’s athlete of the year.

Taylor fielded Harris’ first question on her recent busy schedule by reeling off a list of the places she had been in the past three months—a whirlwind tour that twice took her to Eugene, Ore. where she won her first NCAA title and an American bronze; then to Europe and Zagreb, Croatia where she ran a 55.46-second personal record that earned her the right to run at Edmonton.

“Now I’m here representing Harvard on an international level, and I’m having the time of my life,” said Taylor, who had spoken similar words following her third-place finish at U.S. Nationals in June.

Taylor’s pride in her Crimson roots came as no surprise to those familiar with her. Her passion for her team was revealed in the exhausting workload of three individual events plus relays that she accepted in every championship meet. She was not afraid to put herself at great personal risk for her team, as she proved in the 2000 Outdoor Heptagonal meet, where she ran the 400 hurdles despite reinjuring her hamstring earlier in the day. A year later, she would run in the 200-meter dash instead of the 400 hurdles to strategically maximize her team’s chance of winning the Heptagonal meet, even though it meant graduating without the meet record in her feature event.

Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty ’68 compared Taylor’s dedication, outlook and determination to that off Meredith Rainey-Valmon ’90, the renowned Crimson walk-on runner who won two NCAA titles and made two U.S. Olympic teams in the 800-meter run before retiring last year. Rainey and Taylor between themselves own all of the women’s teams’ records in the sprints and hurdles.

“I’ve given my life to track and to my teammates,” said Taylor in an interview with the Crimson following her NCAA victory. “I’m not like the typical athlete who focuses on just one event.”

By referencing Harvard in her nationally televised interview, Taylor was able to give back to her team months after the conclusion of her college career. Her teammates could take pride in that one of their own was shining on the sport’s premier international stage, while her coaches relished the great publicity that Taylor was bringing to their program.

The refined and mature Taylor, a Third Team Academic All-American, was an ideal representative for all of the potential Harvard recruits that would be glued to the television that afternoon. This was the same Taylor distinguished by her poise and sincerity at the 2001 Honda Awards ceremony—the gathering of the greatest collegiate female athletes in the nation—where several observers told her that she belonged on television.

Taylor’s strong finish in her preliminary heat, where she ran even with Germany’s Heike Meissner around the final turn for third place and then pulled comfortably ahead down the stretch, came as no surprise to those familiar with her victories at Penn Relays and NCAAs, where she passed Texas’ Angel Patterson on the final hurdle, or her final at U.S. Nationals where she beat favored Michelle Johnson down the stretch to earn the third and final spot on the U.S. National Team.

Those unfamiliar with Taylor, including ABC announcer Carol Lewis—who worried out loud whether Taylor could hold off Meissner—were left in awe with her toughness down the final straightaway. Taylor herself attributed her first sub-56 second race at NCAAs to the improvement in the second half of her race. That newfound ability to finish, according to Haggerty, is what transformed Taylor from a U.S. semifinalist to a World semifinalist in just one year.

“If I were to reduce it to one factor, if that could be done, it would be a sharper focus than what she had before, and what she had before was pretty good,” said Haggerty, who also praised Taylor’s continued training with Associate Head Coach Walter Johnson ’71 and her diligent weightlifting throughout the season.

Taylor’s finish of 56.28 seconds in the preliminaries was a considerable improvement over her dismal 57.95-second performance in her most recent IAAF Grand Prix race in Stockholm on July 17, but still short of the personal record of 55.46 seconds she set at Zagreb on July 2.

“I’ve been having a little trouble the past few races, but I got out here today and knew what I had to do,” Taylor said.

Taylor’s third-place finish meant that she would be forced into one of the unfavorable outside lanes in her semifinal heat on Monday. She drew lane eight.

“Being in lane eight, a lot of people think it’s a bad lane, but being a former 400 hurdler myself, I think it’s one of the best,” Haggerty said. “It’s got a wider turn.”

Taylor placed sixth in the semifinal heat in 56.52 seconds, leaving her short of the top four finishers who qualified for the final. With Romania’s Ionela Tirlea placing fourth at 54.92 seconds, she would have needed to run over a half-second faster than her personal record to make the final.

“I got out reasonably well,” Taylor said. “I was a little bit sluggish. I don’t know—I crossed the finish line in [56.28] yesterday and I felt I could run at least a second faster.”

Taylor was last in the heat going around the final turn, but she managed to finish with a flourish again, passing former U.S. Olympic Trial competitor Yvonne Harrison—now running for Puerto Rico—and Great Britain’s Sinead Dudgeon, who had beaten Taylor in the preliminaries.

“I suspect [Taylor] is tired from a long year,” Haggerty said. “She had to peak too many times—Indoor Heps, Outdoor Heps, ECACs, NCAAs... Our first competition was Dec. 2, definitely earlier than anyone else in the field. Most people there probably started in May and didn’t run any indoor meets.”

Haggerty also suspects that Taylor was limited in this year’s championships because it was her first time qualifying for the meet. Taylor herself said that she was nervous at her first NCAA meet during her sophomore year, and because of her hamstring injuries a year later, she was not a surefire collegiate title contender until this past season.

“This seems to happen a lot—when you set a goal to qualify for a meet and then make that goal, the meet itself becomes a bit anticlimactic,” Haggerty said.

Although Taylor finished out her competitive schedule on Monday, she still had six days of world-class track competition to enjoy in Edmonton.

“Now I get to cheer on my teammates, so this is one of the best times of my life,” Taylor said.

Taylor has the chance to support not only her American teammates—including fellow 400-hurdlers Tonja Buford-Bailey and Sandra Glover who both made the finals but failed to medal—but also her former Harvard teammate Dora Gyorffy ’01-02, whose high jump preliminaries begin tonight.

Gyorffy, ranked third on the world high jump performance list at the Hungarian national record height of two meters, will have her chance to deliver another medal-worthy performance in the finals on Sunday. If she succeeds, Harvard track and field will once again be in the international spotlight.

Although Taylor and Gyorffy closed out their careers by leading the Crimson to an Ivy-record performance at NCAAs last June, the honors for themselves and for their school seem destined to continue for years to come.