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It seemed that Roger Kingdom had a brilliant career in front of him when
he emerged, at only 21 years of age, to win the 110m hurdles gold medal
at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles in a new personal best time of
13.20sec. This certainly looked the case immediately after Los
Angeles, when Roger undertook a successful European tour, reducing his
personal best on two more occasions, firstly to 13.17sec in Berlin, and
then to 13.16sec at Zurich. He continued this improvement into the
early part of 1985, lowering his personal best to 13.14sec at Modesto on
11 May, and winning the national title at Indianapolis on 15 June.
However, Kingdom's season was cut short due to an injury to his left
hamstring.
This injury plagued Roger over the next two years, and
threatened to bring a premature end to his career. Although not totally
inactive, he was a mere shadow of his 1984 self, with yearly bests of
13.40sec in 1986 and 13.51sec in 1987. Consequently, his amazing
rejuvenation as the world's top hurdler in 1988 was even that more
incredible, winning all 25 races (17 finals) that he contested. The
highlights of Kingdom's domestic season were winning his second national
title at Tampa on 17 June, and a victory at the USA Olympic trials at
Indianapolis on 23 July.
He then embarked on an undefeated tour of
Europe where he smashed his previous personal best at the high altitude
resort of Sestriere, clocking 12.97sec to move to second on the all-time
world list. Kingdom emphatically demonstrated his superiority in 1988
at the Olympic Games in Seoul, where he broke his own Olympic record
with a 13.17sec victory in his quarter-final, and then easily retained
his Olympic title (see photo above) with another new Olympic record of 12.98sec in the final. (Ron Casey)
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