Confident McLeod believes he can go all the way

Unbeaten throughout the just-concluded collegiate season, sprint hurdler Omar McLeod has expressed confidence in his ability to remain unbeaten after the national championships this weekend to select Jamaica's team to the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, China. Should he make the team he is also not ruling out the possibility of returning home with gold.

The 21-year-old University of Arkansas sophomore crowned himself NCAA Indoor 60-metre hurdles champion in March setting a new NCAA record of 7.45 seconds which was also the joint fastest time in the world this year. After successfully defending the indoor title he first won in his freshman year, the Manchester High past student and Kingston College old boy won the NCAA Outdoor title in a wind-aided 13.01 on June 12. He said the win was redemption for not being able to compete last year because of a torn quadriceps muscle that forced him to look on from the sidelines.

The performance, he said, tells him he is in the form of his life, which makes him hard to beat.

"My thing is I have no time to worry about anybody else," said McLeod who will likely line up against Olympic bronze medalist Hansel Parchment, 2011 NCAA Champion Andre Riley, Dwight Thomas and other quality opponents at the National Stadium on Saturday night. "The thing everybody else will have over me is experience but I am a lot sharper, I run the 400m so I also have strength but ultimately I think it is going to come down to experience but I have been running numerous 110m hurdles and through rounds so it's just for me to now focus on my lane," said the athlete whose season best legal time of 13.21 makes him the fastest Jamaican this year and the seventh fastest in the world.

McLeod's confidence comes from the fact that he believes he could have gone faster had the trailing wind not been as high as it was. Such a strong wind makes it more difficult for hurdlers because it pushes them towards the hurdles faster than they want to be and that makes it harder to execute.

"Based on what my coaches said, a 3.9 wind is really a ridiculous wind to run in. That was the hardest hurdles race I have ever run in my life. The wind was pushing me too close and forcing me to adjust and had me spending more time thinking about where the placement of my foot should be rather than just running freely. So I definitely think I was capable of running 12.9-low," he said.

Such are his ambitions however, that McLeod is not ruling out upsetting the world's best in Beijing, should he make the team.

"We set goals and my thing is and I want to accomplish my goals. After pulling my quad last year, sacrificing my whole summer to go to rehab and get my quad right and be healthy, one of the first things I wrote down was to go to World Championships and win," he said. "I am doing everything possible. I am in the shape of my life now and I am trusting God that I stay healthy. Once I stay healthy, the sky is the limit for me."