Sprinter making his way over hurdles in new event
Dec. 8, 2008 - Regina Leader-Post
By Tim Switzer
Alger Seon won't lie when asked about the first time he watched Uzair Ahmed attempt to clear a hurdle.
"It wasn't too good," said a chuckling Seon, an assistant coach with the University of Regina Cougars track and field team. "But it got better. I wanted him to have more fun with the sport and his shins were hurting him in sprinting. I don't know why I suggested hurdles because that's supposed to make the shins worse."
In his first season with the U of R team, Ahmed was having a little trouble finding his niche. He sprinted at Campbell Collegiate, but wasn't having success with it at the university level.
When his second season began last year, Seon mentioned that the pre-med student might want to give hurdles a try.
"I had always seen Alger and the job he did with the hurdles and I was always interested," said Ahmed, 20. "It was a struggle to figure out how to do it. When we started it was just doing drills constantly until one day, Al in his specific style told me, 'OK, now you have to jump over them.' The first few times didn't go too well.
"The main thing with hurdling is you can't think of it as a jump, you have to run over it. It took a while to get over the fear of hurdling."
But eventually, Ahmed caught on and ran his first race by the end of last season. On Saturday, he finished fourth out of five racers in the 60-metre hurdles at the Friendship Games, but showed good form and was less than a second behind winner Justin Baker, a former world junior championships participant. Ahmed, though, did not seem happy with his race as he pounded his fist into the crash mat just beyond the finish line.
"(Ahmed) is very determined and willing to work hard," said Seon, who expects Ahmed will be able to compete at events throughout the Canada West season. "It wasn't out of not working before. It was finding something he might be good at and get him feeling happy about himself."
Ahmed displays that work ethic in his time away from the track, too. An academic all-Canadian, Ahmed takes a full load of five courses each semester while preparing for medical school.
Considering that, it's a wonder he would even bother with track and field training and competitions.
"I don't have time to work so I joke that track is my job," said Ahmed. "It's a lot to handle, but the rewards are far greater. I couldn't imagine not doing it.
"There's the feeling of family -- more even than competing. I see these people every day and develop that camaraderie. I would miss that a lot if I gave it up."
NOTES: Two Cougars athletes hit CIS standards Saturday and earned a trip to the university national championships in Windsor in March. Rookie high jumpers Jeremy Eckert and Connor MacDonald each reached the CIS standard of two metres. Baker, with a time of 8.36 seconds in the hurdles, is likely to reach the CIS championships as well. The hurdles standard is 8.34 but the top 12 runners in the country qualify for the championships whether they reach it or not. Baker's time from Saturday would have earned him a sixth-place finish in last season's national final.
