Devon Allen and playing a double role in professional sport

The first athletics World Championships being held in the United States (from July 15, at Eugene, Oregon), will also draw focus to where track and field stands in terms of popularity in a country where franchise sports rule.

PREMIUM

The World Championships began at Helsinki in 1983 and US athletes have been a big presence in each of the 17 editions held so far. US have topped the medals tally in 13 editions. Yet, it has taken almost 40 years for the biggest athletics competition outside of Olympics to give its most influential stars a chance to bask on home turf.

Eugene’s Hayward Field will be an ideal venue for the meet as it is considered the spiritual home of US track and field. Bringing the meet here will in some way be like the Greek organisers staging a beautiful opening ceremony at the 330 BC Panathinaikos Stadium, set to a concept by the late Oscar-winning music composer, Vangelis ahead of the 1997 edition. It was as if to tell the world athletic bosses what they missed by not awarding the 1996 centenary Olympics to Greece and instead giving it to Atlanta.

Devon Allen, for one, will take aim more at revolution as far as modern professional sport is concerned. A top contender for the 110m hurdles title, Allen, will be out to prove that even in an ultra-competitive world of professional sport one can excel in two sport at the same time. High hurdles carry enough injury risk, but the 27-year-old has also signed up a lucrative contract as wide receiver with National Football League (NFL) side Philadelphia Eagles.

Straight line speed, power, strength and determination are qualities hurdles and wide receiver should possess in plenty. Allen, while taking aim at compatriot Grant Holloway’s world title, is confident he can double up. The NFL season runs from September to January while global athletics begins with the indoor season in March and runs till August.

“I would say I am just a great athlete. I bet that if I had played tennis 15 years ago, I would be a pro tennis player, or golf, whatever,” he told reporters after victory at the Oslo Diamond League in June. “I enjoy doing a lot of sports. It is really hard to be great at anything on this level.”

Two days after Oslo, he won at the Paris Diamond League as well, showing that his clocking 12.84 seconds, the third fastest time ever in 110m hurdles, to beat Holloway in the New York Grand Prix meet was no fluke. He qualified by coming only third in the US national championships at Eugene, but can be expected to be in peak form during the fortnight of the worlds.

While a career that combines high-level track with bone-crunching football strikes as too risky, Allen has shown no signs of fatigue so far and is confident of managing both seasons. He finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics and retured to a sport he had played during his college days in Oregon six years ago.

“The biggest thing for me football-wise is I’m plenty fast enough and strong enough as an athlete, I’ve just got to start doing football stuff, running routes, catching footballs.”

For now he trains with the Eagles for four days and switches to track work on off days at the weekend.

"It made me more relaxed and kind of focused me up in terms of what I’m doing… football and track, trying to balance both, I had to be really cautious about my recovery, my sleep, my diet, everything like that," he said last month.

MIXING 'EM UP

An internet search for two sports that can be combined throws up two very interesting results at the top, chess boxing and circle rules football. In the first one, rivals alternate between a round of boxing and a game of blitz chess until one won, by knockout or checkmate. The other is a far less bruising, a six-a-side event played with a large sphere that looks more like a balance ball, with the players essentially free to kick, dribble, carry or throw it in a game comprising four 15-minute quarters.

The next two, though, shows football (the NFL variety) and track and field (athletics) along with basketball and volleyball.

Allen though will not be alone at the world championships. The 18-year-old Erriyon Knighton, who clocked 19.79 seconds to come second in the US national meet and qualify behind world champion Noah Lyles, switched from a blossoming career in grid-iron football to track due to the disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic.

The 6ft 3in Knighton from Tampa, Florida has personal bests of 10.04secs and 19.49secs in the sprints. His time for the longer distance is a world U-20 record and fourth fastest ever, only behind the best of Jamaicans Usain Bolt and Yohann Blake and former US great Michael Johnson.

Knighton started as wide receiver for the Hillsborough High School team in Tampa. He was advised to sharpen his sprinting skills by his football coach and the pandemic halting the season only pushed him further into athletics. A sponsorship deal with adidas in January, 2021 turned the 16-year-old into a professional and thus made him ineligible for scholarships.

But qualification for the Tokyo Olympics, where he was the youngest US athlete since distance running great Jim Ryun in 1964, helped set his goals. He won his semi-final and finished fourth in the final in Japan, which means the man who bettered Bolt's U-18 world mark seven times in the build-up to Tokyo can make a splash in Eugene.

"It could have gone differently if high school season was still going. I probably would still have been playing football if I would've had that extra year," he told BBC Sport.

Juggling between athletics and American football has history.

In the 1980s, Renaldo Nehemiah, the 110m hurdles world record holder, switched to play professionally as wide receiver for San Francisco 49ers in NFL. With athletics thrown open for professionals, Nehemiah returned after four seasons, though he did not reach the heights of old in the high hurdles.

Bolt, the 100m and 200m world record who retired with eight Olympic and 11 world championships gold, tried to become a footballer. The man responsible for re-igniting global interest in athletics, unsuccessfully tried to switch to playing football after his track career ended, coming closest to a contract in Australia's A-League.

Experience unrestricted digital access with HT Premium

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.