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Roger Kingdom's rise to win the Olympic 110m hurdles title at Los
Angeles in 1984 was short and spectacular. Starting the 1983 season
with a personal best of only 14.07sec, Kingdom broke through with a win
in the national collegiate championships on 4 June, and then a win at
the Pan-American Games on 28 August, recording a new personal best of
13.44sec. Kingdom continued his improvement in the early part of the
following season, reducing his best to 13.43sec at Domino, and then to
13.36sec in the semi-finals at the USA Olympic trials on 19 June. Due
to the depth of USA hurdlers, their Olympic trials final has usually
been as competitive as the Olympic final itself, and, although this was
again the case in 1984, the young Kingdom managed to make the team in
third place, despite finishing well behind Olympic favourite Greg
Foster.
Roger was still not looked upon as a potential Olympic gold
medallist even when he again reduced his best time to 13.32sec on 14
July, but when he clocked a wind-assisted 13.00sec the following week in
Sacramento, he started to attract a lot more interest. At Los Angeles,
things started to heat up from the start when Foster equalled the
Olympic record of 13.24sec in his heat. Kingdom equalled this time with
a new personal best in the first semi-final, and then Foster equalled
it again when he won the second semi, setting up a thrilling
confrontation between the two of them in the final on 6 August. In the
final, Foster led over the last hurdle, and although Roger made a late
surge at the line, he was convinced that he had only finished second.
The subsequent news that he had won the gold medal in a new Olympic
record of 13.20sec, no doubt contributed to his obvious delight on the
victory podium (see photo above). (Ron Casey)
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