HANSLE PARCHMENT

HURDLER Hansle Parchment won his second major global medal yesterday at the World Championships in Beijing, China.

Parchment finished second in the 110m with a time of 13.03 seconds behind Russian Sergey Shubenkov who won in a national record of 12.98 seconds. The tall hurdler won the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics and is now eagerly looking forward to the Olympics next year in Rio, Brazil.

Parchment is, however, quite aware that to progress to gold he has to work on his start. He again was made to pay for his slow start despite powering through the field for second.

“I was looking forward to a stronger start but I didn’t get that as well as I wanted to, but I kept my composure nevertheless, because I know if I try to do too much, I will mess up, so I kept my focus and ran very hard to the line,” he pointed out.

In what was a wide open event, Parchment just failed to catch the Russian, but was happy to be on the podium for his first World Championship medal.

“I am very happy, I can just imagine how my mom, my coach are feeling right now and also the people back home. I think they probably are much happier than I am because I was a little bit disappointed about the start,” he said.

“Overall, it was a really good performance as I worked really hard despite the challenges that I had earlier in the season,” said Parchment who had some niggling injuries.

The former Morant Bay and Kingston College student admits to being a big race performer.

“I think I keep a level head most of the time. I try not to worry too much or fret about anything about the race. I just keep focused and just tell myself that I am the best and give the best performance that I can,” he explained.

“With each performance, I realise that I can do much better, I realise that I am very strong in this event, and with this in mind I always go out and give my best,” he ended.