Wallace Spearmon Video from 2012 Olympic Media Summit
By LetsRun.com
May 13, 2012
The USOC Team USA 2012 Olympic Media Summit is taking place in Dallas Sunday thru Tuesday. On Sunday track and field stars, Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Wallace Spearmon, Lashinda Demus, Trey Hardee, Jillian Camarena-Williams, Brittney Reese, and Hyleas Fountain addressed the media. A full recap of Sunday's highlights from the track and field athletes can be found here. If you're just interested in Wallace Spearmon, we're going to have a longer article on him this week, but we've got video of our talk with him below along with the textual part on Wallace from our full Day 1 recap.
Wallace Spearmon Training Harder Than Ever, No More Pick Up Basketball Games with NBA Stars
Wallace Spearmon, a Worlds silver medallist at 200 in 2005 and bronze medallist in 2007 and 2009, missed most of 2011 with an achilles injury. In order to get healthy and with the encouragement of his old coach, Alleyne Francique (two time World indoor 400m champion) of Texas A&M, Spearmon has switched coaches in 2012 to Monte Stratton in Arlington, Texas and put a tremendous emphasis on rehab work to stay healthy.
The first thing Spearmon does when he wakes up now, before he even has breakfast is go into the "training room" in his home in Cedar Hill, Tx and start his rehab work. Spearmon says he doesn't get back from the track until 2:30-3:00 now and that even after that he'll be doing some rehab.
When asked if he was training harder than in the past, Spearmon the son of 20.2 Pan Am Bronze Medallist Wallace Spearmon Sr, shook his head, laughed and said, "I used to train hard. I thought I trained hard. Right now my eyes are opened. Honestly, a lot of people told me 'You're just so naturally talented' and I used to get frustrated when they told me that because I felt like I worked extremely hard to get where I was. But now I kind of realize after I missed a whole season (last year) and I came back in the first race and ran 10.0 and came back in the 200 and ran 19.9, there is a lot of natural talent there, but now I'm putting hard work into the equation as well."
When pressed on why he got injured last year, Spearmon finally said the reason may have been too many pick up basketball games with NBA stars Mike Conley Jr, Ronnie Brewer, and Joe Johnson. We'll have more on that later. Spearmon's injury is now behind him and the man chasing Usain Bolt had this to say, "This is the first time I've actually been healthy leading up to our Trials, so I really have no idea what I'm capable of." Spearmon said if the Olympic Trials were tomorrow he thought he'd be ready to make the team.
Wallace Spearmon Working Harder Than Ever:
*Full Day 1 Recap: Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Wallace Spearmon, Lashinda Demus, Trey Hardee, Jillian Camarena-Williams, Brittney Reese, and Hyleas Fountain
*Allyson Felix Interview
*Sanya Richards Ross Video
|
|
|
|
|
|