Olympic champion and world record holder Aries Merritt says he finds it a “little strange” that no-one has dipped below 13 seconds in the 110 metres hurdles this season and plans to remedy the situation in the World Cham-pionships, starting this weekend.
Merritt missed much of the early part of the outdoor campaign with a hamstring injury but in his absence the best any of his rivals could muster was the 13.03 by his fellow American David Oliver in Lausanne a month ago.
Now declaring himself fully fit for an assault on the world title in Moscow, Merritt has perhaps forgotten that his remarkable 2012 somewhat distorted the statbook.
Last year the 13-second barrier was broken 12 times but eight of those marks were by Merritt. It was an astonishingly consistent run of form in the most technical of events and climaxed with Olympic gold (12.92) and his stunning world record of 12.80 in September.
His best 2013 time of 13.09 in Paris a month ago leaves Merritt fifth in the year’s rankings but he will go into next week’s event as the firm favourite.
“It’s really strange, I was thinking some of the guys who weren’t injured would get under 13 so it’s weird that they’re not,” Merritt told reporters in Moscow.
“Everyone knows I hurt the hamstring... but I’m ready for the race of my life. My fitness is great now and training has been great and I finally feel ready to give the fans what they want, that magic barrier of under 13secs.
“The practice track is extremely fast and I’ve been told the stadium track is very similar to London, apart from the fact that it’s blue, so we should see some fast times.”
Merritt is one of four Americans in the event along with Oliver, world champion Jason Richardson and US trials winner Ryan Wilson, offering a real chance of a first global clean sweep in the event since the 1960 Olympics.
The United States won 15 of the first 17 Olympic high hurdles races and an incredible 40 of the first 50 medals awarded.
They also took seven of the first nine world championship golds beginning in 1983 with the first of Greg Foster’s hat-trick.
In recent years, however, as other nations have embraced the discipline, they have not had things quite so easy and have taken only one World Championship and one Olympic Games title from the last four editions of each competition.