Kyron McMaster could become one of the unlikeliest world champions if he wins the 400 metres hurdles title having recently been more used to the horsepower of driving a truck.
However, the 20-year-old — who would give the British Virgin Islands their first ever medal in the championships — is a hot contender having posted the best time in the world this year of 47.80 seconds.
The youngster will be up against some seasoned competitors such as Puerto Rico’s two-time world silver medallist Javier Culson and the outstanding American Kerron Clement, who won successive world titles in 2007 and 2009 and at last captured the Olympic gold in Rio last year.
Should McMaster and Clement be side by side hurdling the last obstacle in the final (which is on Wednesday though heats get underway on Sunday with the semis on Monday) it will be a case of the bulky truck driver taking on the svelte shape of a man who models in his spare time and has appeared in a Beyonce video ‘Run the World (Girls)’, which has been viewed over 300million times on You Tube.
McMasters proud as punch parents — who convinced him to ditch his studies at university in the United States last year because the authorities there wanted him to compete despite being injured — are convinced their son will return from London with a medal.
“I suspect, at the World Championship in London, he is gonna bring home a medal — the first medal of that nature and magnitude to the BVI,” his father Anthony told British Virgin Islands Online in May.
His parents, though, say McMaster — who showed his potential when he took bronze in the world junior championships last year behind Jamaican Jaheel Hyde — will have to make a choice in terms of his career path because he cannot combine both trucking, his truck is his baby according to his mother Jocelyn, and athletics.
“His manager (Norman Peart who is also Usain Bolt’s) told him that, if he is serious about athletics and wants to go all the way, he has to put the trucking aside,” his father said.
“That’s something we are still trying to figure out. They said the truck — the gravity and the momentum and the vibration and whatnot — it counteracts your muscles with the training you are doing in athletics.
“Kyron has a three-yard truck, and you know trucking is hard — lifting stuff, moving them, and whatnot...But that’s how he makes his living,” added his father.
Clement on the other hand has been a full-time athlete for over a decade although the 31-year-old Trinidad-born hurdler — who moved to the United States aged 13 — has found time to model in his spare time and then there was the Beyonce video of course.
“Years later they ask about Beyonce stuff, it was fun I love to be a part of entertainment.That was a great experience to be a part of that with Beyonce,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in January.
“It’s funny.Everyone knows now,” added Clement, who beat McMasters in the London Diamond League event in July.
Clement, who cheekily admits he prefers Mariah Carey to Beyonce, is also a keen photographer but is focused still on adding a third world 400m hurdles gold to his tally before other pursuits take over.
