Fresh off his new national indoor 400m record set at the Tiger Paw Invitational on Saturday, Kyron McMaster said he will focus on maintaining good health this season and he prepares to match strides with the world’s best at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in July.
The 23-year-old British Virgin Islander set a new national record of 45.84s over 400 metres at the meet held at Clemson University on Saturday and says that he is as good as any 400-metre hurdler in the world and being in good health will allow him to show the magnitude of his immense talent.
In 2018, McMaster established himself among the world’s elite 400m hurdlers when he clocked a personal best 47.54, one of the fastest times in the world that year when he won gold at the Commonwealth Games, NACAC Senior Championships and the CAC Games.
However, in 2019 he suffered injury setbacks that saw him miss the Pan Am Games and perhaps caused him not to be at his best for the World Championships in Doha where he finished in fourth place in 48.10.
For 2020, he wants to put his injury worries behind him.
“My main focus is staying healthy and to dominate and execute my workouts. Competition is something I have been doing professionally now for four years so the mental preparation for races is always there. So, the main focus is staying healthy and executing workouts,” he said, acknowledging that he can successfully challenge 2019 World Champion Karsten Warholm, silver medallist Rai Benjamin and bronze medallist Abderrahman Samba during the coming outdoor season.
“I think I have the same calibre of talent and put in hard work to contest those athletes,” he said.
“They set the bar high and it’s just like the high jump, sort of. After one athlete clears the bar, the next competitors raise the bar and they surely did that, and I am not trying to foul out this time.”
He is confident he will be in the mix this season.
“I think I’m in pretty good shape this trip around compared to the last few years and I think I do stand a shot to challenge them at Olympics and on the circuit,” he said.
Coming off a strong personal-best 32.91-run over 300m in January, McMaster said he was not surprised by the new national 400m indoor record.
“I guess I knew I could have done it while preparing for it. The thought and execution process was in my head and it was just to transfer it onto the track,” he said, revealing that his training suggested that the time was on the cards.
“Training was projecting something along those lines. I felt confident about that. We all know how sometimes training times don’t reflect in competition so I also left room for optimism.”