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Derrick Adkins is the 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist in the 400-meter hurdles. He is also 1995 World Champion in the 400-meter hurdles and is one of only five men to earn a back-to-back Gold Medals at the Olympics and World Championships in his event. Derrick also raced to Gold Medals in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1996 IAAF Grand Prix Final, 1994 and 1995 USATF Championships and 1994 Goodwill Games. In his two other World Championships finals, he finished sixth in 1991 and seventh in 1993. During Derrick’s peak years of 1994 to 1996, he finished either first or second in forty-six of fifty-three races. His one dozen plus circuit wins include three times at Weltklasse Zurich, twice each at the Oslo Bislett Games, Paris and Lucern, plus victories in London, Belgium and Osaka. He was the fastest 400-meter hurdler in the world in 1994 and 1996 and broke 48 seconds twenty times. At the 1989 Pan Am Juniors he scored Gold Medals in the 400-meter hurdles and as a member of the four by 400-meter relay. At Georgia Tech University, Derrick was a six-time All-American including two relay Gold Medals, eight ACC championships and was 1991 ACC Outdoor Track and Field MVP. His prep racing at Malverne High School on Long Island, New York included two state championships, the fastest time in the USA in 1988 at 50.71 seconds and being named the 1988 New York Gatorade Track and Field Award Winner. Personal best times are outdoors: 100 meters – 10.48; 400 meters – 46.42; 110-meter hurdles – 13.69; and 400-meter hurdles – 47.54; and indoors: 400 meters – 46.37; 500 meters – 1:01.7 and 60-meter hurdles – 8.22. He was inducted into the Nassau County High School Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017 and named to the ACC 50th Anniversary Track and Field team in 2002. Derrick stayed close to the sport as Director of the Armory Track and Field Center, supporter of the Friendship Games, by starting the annual Derrick Adkins Classic, serving with the Lakeview Youth Federation, coaching track at Columbia University, working with the New York Road Runners, and coaching at the Central Park Track Club. Based on his experience with injuries, including head trauma, Derrick is a strong advocate for proper evaluation, diagnosis and management of head injuries. He was very generous to spend two and a half hours on the telephone for this interview.
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THE BIG PICTURE It’s been over twenty-five years since you won Gold Medals in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1995 World Championships and 1996 Olympics. What did it mean to in the moment on those two days and how were those accomplishments similar, but different?
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I had two different feelings regarding the 1995 World Championships victory and the 1996 Olympic victory. I was using the World Championships kind of like practice for the Olympics. My agent had told me many times that, if I won the World Championships, I could win the Olympics – not that it was guaranteed. But he said that I would have the potential to win Olympic Gold. So, I put all focus on winning the 1995 World Championships. That was a very difficult race for me. It was one of the hardest races I ever ran based on how I felt during the race. I felt tired at the third hurdle. But I just kept pressing through. Fortunately, I was able to stay in front of my competitors. There are other races I won where I felt smoother. In the Olympic victory I felt fluid. I felt smooth. I was relatively fatigued at the end of the race, but not as much as in other races. After winning the 1995 World Championships I was happy, but I didn’t see it as the ‘end all’ and ‘be all.’ It was a check point on my way of going toward that Olympic Gold Medal. After winning the 1996 Olympic victory, I found I was saying to myself, ‘Is this really happening?’ I wanted to pinch myself. Was this a dream or was it truly happening? I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. We all dream to achieve certain things but, at the end of the day, we all know there is a slim chance it will happen. I had been a resident of Atlanta for the previous eight years. I went to college at Georgia Tech, which was right down the street. Georgia Tech was the Olympic Village. I had a surprised feeling and a sensation of bewilderment. I also had emotions of anxiety, which was the weirdest thing in the world being anxious after a race. Usually, I am super anxious before a race. After a race, whether I win or lose, there is no more anxiety. But I felt anxiety after the race because I was thinking, ‘This is crazy. Where is my life going to go now? That is how I felt back then.
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As the years went by, what did it mean to be both a World Champion and Olympic Champion and how did it change the course of your life as a runner and as an inspiration to others?
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As far as how it changed the trajectory of my life, it is something that people continue to respect a person for many decades, probably until you die. Herb Douglas in a hundred and one years old, his victories and achievements were probably seventy plus years ago and people still respect him for being a champion. (Sad note - between conducting and publishing this interview, 1948 Olympic Bronze Medalist Herb Douglas passed away) That is how it is today for me. I have had many emotional ups and downs and hard times in my life since the Olympic victory, but people continue to respect me. No matter what hard times I have had, people still have the disposition that I am still the champion, no one can take that away and they continue to respect me. That’s one thing it has done for me. It would be different if I was an average Joe with mental ups and downs and didn’t have the Gold Medal. In that case, people just know you as that person who is troubled. It is countered by the victory, and it simply doesn’t go away.
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Since the inception of the World Championships in 1983, only five athletes have been able to win back-to-back World and Olympic titles in your event, the 400-meter hurdles. How does it feel to be included in this select group of champions with Edwin Moses, Kevin Young, Felix Sanchez and Karsten Warholm?
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It’s great. It’s absolutely great to be in that company. I’m very cognizant of the fact that, as a 400 meter hurdles Gold Medalist who was number one in the world three years in a row, going back-to-back puts me in their category. Outside of that, most people would say that Karsten Warholm and Kevin Young and Edwin Moses are not at just the top, but the tip of the top as the greatest of their time and the greatest of all time. The three of them can be considered the greatest of all time while I was the greatest of my time. I feel very appreciative to have done what I accomplished. I never felt in any way disgruntled that I never set an American Record or set a World Record. Some athletes, no matter what they achieve, are not happy with the fact that they had greater goals. But I am appreciative that I was able to do what I did.
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During your peak years of the 1994, 1995 and 1996 seasons, you raced your chief rival, Samuel Matete, 33 times, which is a lot, with you holding a slight 18-15 edge in one of track and field’s greatest mid-1990s rivalries. Also, in those three years, you ran fifty-three races and were in the top two in forty-six of those fifty-three races. What was it like going head-to-head with such a strong competitor so often and with many close finishes as you pushed each other to the limits?
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It was different, because as much as we were competing, we had nothing but respect for one another. I think it’s mainly because Sam was always very respectful toward me. I would chase him all the time when we raced in college. I was running for Georgia Tech, and he was running for Auburn. I never beat him in college – not once. Though I was always finishing behind him, he showed sportsmanship. The first time I beat him was in 1993 right after I graduated from college, and he continued to show great sportsmanship. Some athletes, when you start beating them after they are used to beating you, don’t have much to say to you. We had respect for one another. Some said that was unusual for us to be such fierce rivals and to be friendly. It wasn’t like we were friends who would hang out with each other but, when we did see each other both before and after a race, there was a lot of cordiality and respect. That was kind of different because there are rivalries where the two people don’t like one another. Then you have those like mine and Sam’s. I think we were both very objective and nonemotional on the track. If I could read his mind, I think it was a lot like mine which was ‘it is what it is.’ We were both happy for those years to be the top two and to be living our dream and winning races. I had friends and family members and fans who wished I wasn’t so nice to Sam. They didn’t like how I would shake my competitor’s hand and hug him after the race. They wanted me to be more ferocious. I would laugh when they said that, and I disagreed. I had to put a lot of energy out there for less than fifty seconds. I don’t have to be angry with a competitor outside of those fifty seconds to help me get around the track. Some people see it otherwise and think we have to have a beast mentality and be a fiercely driven person to the point where we are almost hostile. I just disagree. I think that objectively speaking we have to put it all out there for the time of the race. No matter what happens, the sun will come up the next day if you lose. That’s how I see it.
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Since you had so may close finishes with Samuel Matete in the most important meets, for example, when he nipped you by three hundredths of a second at the 1994 Grand Prix Final and you edged him by five hundredths of a second the next year at the 1995 World Championships, what did you and your coach do in training and race day strategy and mental preparation to put you in the best position to peak and race your best in the most important meets?
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I tell people all the time that we were equal in talent. Even though the results those three years were eighteen wins for me versus fifteen for him, we were still equal in talent. It became a matter of who had a few inches more energy on a given day. I think Sam saw it the same day. I would go into a race knowing I could beat Sam. But I also went in knowing that Sam could beat me. I would just think that I was going to give it my best and see what happens that day. I think he felt the same way about it. I believe he was appreciative in winning Silver Medals those two years. Outside of those three years, he accomplished much more than I did. I didn’t make it to the 2000 Olympic Games. I never ran 47.10. He also won a World Championship Gold Medal in 1991. For those three years I was a little more dominant but, when we look at it all objectively, it ends up being good, honest competition with true sportsmanship between the two of us.
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While you were aiming to peak for the top meets, you also were very consistent while running fifteen to twenty meets per season, breaking 48 seconds on twenty occasions during your career. What did you do to be consistently close to peak form for a period of several months each season that could stretch from May through September?
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It has to do with the training we did at Georgia Tech. When you look at our strength during those years, Coach Hinsdale coached three Olympic Gold Medalists, all in the 400 meter hurdles and four by 400-meter relay. And prior to being the head coach, he was the assistant coach to Buddy Fowkles who coached Antonio McKay to an Olympic Bronze Medal and a Gold Medal in the four by 400-meter relay. Our training was very much suited for long sprinters, for 400-meter runners. Our training included a lot of volume and I believe much more so than many other 400-meter runners. Just like distance runners, including marathon runners, do a certain number of miles per week and it is pure volume, whether it is sixty or seventy or eighty or more miles per week, they have to put in the volume. That’s how it was at Georgia Tech. We put in a lot of volume of at least 1,200 meters per workout, four or five times per week. When I say 1,200 meters, it could be four times 300 meters, six times 200 meters or something else that tended to add up to 1,200 meters. Many other 400-meter runners trained more like sprinters. They had some light days. They had some days where they did pure speed – maybe some repeats of sixty meters. The fact that we trained with high volume from October to March loaded us down. Then we continued with good volume through June and the rest of summer. We would feel heavy because we were running so much. But when we raced over and over again in July and August on the European circuit, I felt those races didn’t fatigue me because of all the volume I put in between October and March. Those races were not taking a lot out of me. That contributed to my ability to be consistent for those three years.
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The 400-meter hurdles is currently experiencing amazing competition and fast times as, on the men’s side Karsten Warholm at 45.94 seconds, Rai Benjamin at 46.17 and Alison Dos Santos at 46.29 are the three fastest in history while, on the women’s side, Sydney McLaughlin with a ridiculously fast 50.68, Dalilah Muhammad at 51.58 and Femke Bol at 52.03 are the three quickest ever. Can you believe how fast men and women are running and, since that we have the three fastest ever for both genders, is this pushing them all to new heights?
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I believe that the competition is so tough, and the races are close for the most part. When your competitor runs a certain time, if you have the champion mindset, that tells you it is humanly possible where you may have thought it was not. I believe especially in Rai Benjamin’s case, 46.17 is super-fast, but it flies under the radar because Karsten Warholm ran 45.94 in the same race. I believe Karsten led Rai to run 46.17. Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney McLaughlin are very similar physically in height, weight and style of running. I believe that when they were closer in times and their competitions were closer, the evenness allowed both to run in the 51s, which was very extraordinary. Sydney’s 50.68 is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. Karsten’s 45.94 is also a time I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I do think the fact that certain athletes are running so fast is causing their competitors to step up as well. Alison Dos Santos has now run several times under forty-seven seconds. He sees Karsten and Rai finish in front of him with these fast times. If you don’t have the champion mindset, you say, ‘I can’t run that fast.’ If you have the champion mindset you say, ‘They did it, so I can do it too.’ That motivates you to go out there and try to do it.
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I’m a CPA who is strong in mathematics and play guitar and I have found within me a convergence of the rhythm of running, including my breathing and step patterns, with four-four time in music and four laps equaling a mile and a lap breaking down into four segments of curves and straightaways like a dollar breaks down into four quarters. Since you were a mechanical engineering major at Georgia Tech and play drums, did you have a similar merging of these elements of math and music and rhythm within you when you run, and it all comes together in your personality and your humanity?
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Yes, I believe so. My dad was a great influence. He was a track star in the 1960s and coached me. When I was about twelve or thirteen years old, my dad was the one who pointed me toward Edwin Moses and said I should look up to Edwin Moses. I would read Sports Illustrated articles and Track and Field News articles and I learned how his major was in physics and he applied science to his training. That immediately made me start to think about the science of running fast. I was fourteen years old when Edwin Moses won the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal. Velocity is distance over time. To run faster, your stride length either has to be longer, which is distance, or your stride frequency has to be greater, and that is time. I was always thinking in these terms. I remember my dad had encouraged me to run with a thirteen-step stride pattern as an eleventh grader. I took thirteen steps to the fifth hurdle as an eleventh grader and was overstriding. You aren’t supposed to overstride as a sprinter, but my dad saw it as something that was necessary for that period of time. He knew that, as I grew, my overstriding would turn into more of a natural fluid stride. I tried to apply biomechanics to a degree. Studying the legacy of Edwin Moses helped me to do that. The 400-meter hurdles is very rhythmic. You hear your steps under you and there is supposed to be a certain sound, a certain cadence. While you are running, you are trying to maintain that cadence. When the crowd is loud, you can’t hear it, but you can feel it. You still hear it in your head even though you can’t hear your feet hit the ground. Becoming a great 400-meter hurdler was important to me since the ninth or tenth grade. It was at the top of my mind, and I was always thinking about how I could become a great 400-meter hurdler. I wasn’t just an athlete who would go to practice and do what the coach said. I was always thinking about it and reading articles about the great ones.
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Since you were reading about and watching videos of the top 400-meter hurdlers, did you emulate any of them in particular?
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I knew a lot about Danny Harris’ history and how many steps he would take around the track. I emulated Danny Harris’ and Andre Phillips’ pattern more so than that of Edwin Moses and Kevin Young. I tried to go thirteen steps around the track. Not only could I not do it – I couldn’t come close. Danny consistently ran thirteen steps for six hurdles and then fourteen steps for the rest of the race, he ran a best of 47.3 seconds, and he was dominant for a few years. I decided that was what I was going to do. Andre Phillips won the Gold Medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and I believe he took thirteen steps for six hurdles or maybe seven. He was similar to Danny except Andre changed his stride pattern sometimes from race to race whereas Danny would run the same stride pattern every race. I emulated Danny’s stride more than that of Edwin Moses because it was a pattern I could do. I felt that, if I could go 47.3, that would be good for me. I ended up running 47.5 as a lifetime PR. Every time these guys would race on television, my dad would press record on the VHS machine and send the recordings to me in Atlanta. So, I had all of these race tapes and was studying Kevin Young, Danny Harris, Andre Phillips and Edwin Moses. I watched them over and over again and put a lot of thought into my training. Not every athlete is that way, but I put a lot of mental effort and study and research into it.
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In recent years, you discovered that the crashes you sustained over hurdles and other injuries in your career may have been a causative factor in depression and brain injuries to your frontal lobe. Has this diagnosis helped in treating this for your health?
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I became depressed during the mid-1990s. I had three major head injuries from hurdle collisions. One was during practice while I was doing the high hurdles in January of 1992. My lead leg went totally under the top bar of the hurdles because I was running faster than I ever had before and I wasn’t used to that speed. I went smashing down to the ground and broke my left collarbone all the way through. My head hit the ground very hard. I didn’t worry about the head pain I had over the next few days. I was only concerned about the collarbone. The head pain went away, and the collarbone healed. The second incident was at the NCAA Championships that year. I was not unconscious and this time I was able to get up even though I fell flat on my face. While I was on the ground for about a second, my mind was still running toward the finish line. So, I automatically got up and kept running. I ended up running a 51.67 and my head hurt a little bit after that race. My worst head injury was in May of 1994 at the New York Games. I clobbered the eighth hurdle, went down, and I couldn’t get up. That time I felt a little dazed and confused. That head pain went away in about two weeks and then depression set in in late 1994. All through 1995 and 1996, there was on and off depression. At the times when depression would hit, it was very severe. I didn’t seek to get help yet. I tried to simply block it out of my mind. It continued to affect me for many years. After my career, it got even worse, possibly because I didn’t have track as a focus. The depression became much worse, and the diagnosis didn’t come until 2020 when a medical professional said that it could be due to head injuries. He asked me if I had sustained any head injuries and I realized that my head injuries were right before the depression began. It made so much sense to me that I scheduled a brain scan. We found I had gross underactivity in my frontal lobe. The doctor told me that this usually results in trouble concentrating. I told him I didn’t have difficulty concentrating or attention deficit, but I would get severely depressed at times. He informed me that the treatment would be to reactivate the frontal lobe of my brain with a targeted medicine. Once I started with that treatment, things became much better. I still see my doctors and take my medicine which is in a class of atypical antidepressants that activate the frontal lobe. It’s been tough.
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Are you using your experiences with injuries, especially head trauma, to counsel young athletes?
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I do want young people to know that we might endure a physical injury and how to avoid injuries. I also want them to know that they also need to be cognizant that head injuries are possible and to be mindful of that. As an example, I discussed with a writer for the New York Times around a year ago about a time when Grant Holloway pulled out of a race in Bermuda. There were five miles per hour winds. I spoke with a few professional athletes who made comments like, ‘That is a travesty’ and ‘How do you pull out of a race?’ Others said, ‘Race Directors hate it when an athlete pulls out of a race’ and ‘It’s windy – so what?’ I mentioned that it was a good decision because wind can push you into a hurdle. As talented as Grant Holloway is and as much as he wants to win every race, he took cautionary measures. He didn’t want to get injured. That is what I’m talking about. We all have to exercise caution. I know that if I was faced with a situation like Grant was back in my days, I would have run. And I would have seen it as a challenge. Whether the five miles per hour wind was with me or against me, I had the type of mentality that I was going to try to break the World Record that day and, if it was too windy, I would set the windy World Record. That was my mentality back then. Grant is much more prudent than I was. So, I encourage athletes to realize that physical injuries are possible. In addition, they have to realize that brain injuries are possible and are different than physical injuries because they don’t always involve constant pain. When the pain of a physical injury is gone, you’re good. When a brain injury is sustained, after a time the pain goes away, but you can have problems with your emotions due to the inner workings of the brain and athletes need to be mindful of that.
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ELITE TRACK AND FIELD COMPETITION Your first big international success was a Gold Medal double at the 1989 Pan American Junior Athletics Championships in Sante Fe, Argentina. In the 400 meter hurdles your time of 50.92 nipped Eronilde de Araujo of Brazil who ran 51.20. In the four by 400-meter relay, the USA team brought together four individual Gold Medalists - leading off with Glenn Terry from the 110-meter hurdles, you on the second leg, Bryan Bridgewater, who won the 100 meters and 200 meters, and anchored by Chris Nelloms, who won the 400 meters as your 3:11.76 beat Brazil’s 3:13.2 by about a dozen meters. How cool was it to have four Gold Medalists running together on the relay and what are your memories of that championship competition?
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What I truly remember is what I also recall from the 1995 Worlds in Sweden – it felt so cold. The temperatures were in the low fifties. Since I was travelling from Atlanta, I preferred weather in the eighties. I run faster when it was in the eighties, or at least in the seventies. But fifty degrees for me, since it was winter in Argentina, was cold. When we got off the plane in Buenos Aries, it felt cold immediately. When we got on the track, I felt like I was muscling myself through those races. I’m grateful that I won, but those races felt very, very difficult getting around that track. Rich Kenah was my roommate and so was Glenn Terry. I didn’t know much about the sport at the international level at that time. I was kind of going through the motions and getting pushed through the system. Now I see that many of the Junior Champions became Senior Champions. Not all made it to the Olympic team, but we had a very strong team during those years. When I got to the next level at the NCAA ranks, I saw athletes that I raced against achieve greatly at the NCAA Championships. I stayed in touch with some, and we were friends. That was an awesome experience. It was also neat that Rich was an 800-meter runner and Glenn was a high hurdler, but Glenn and I were put on the four by 400-meter relay and we still excelled. It was a great time, though I still remember how cold I felt.
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Two years later you reached your first senior global final at the 1991 World Championships in Athletics in Tokyo, Japan, and placed sixth overall. The race was won by Samuel Matete in 47.64 with Winthrop Graham second in 47.74. Your USA teammates Kevin Young and Danny Harris were fourth and fifth in 48.01 and 48.46, respectively, as you raced 49.28 seconds. What was it like experiencing your first World Championships and did Kevin and Danny mentor you both in racing and getting used to international competition at the Senior level?
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Kevin and Danny were very helpful. They surprised me by how helpful they were by reaching out to me and showing me the ropes both in travelling in Europe as well as training and racing in the 400-meter hurdles. I appreciate both of them to this day. When I made the 1991 team at the U.S. Championships that year was one of the greatest feelings in my track career. It’s among the top three greatest feelings in my track career because I beat my expectations. Its great when you have expectations and perform so much better than those expectations. I was almost surprised and happy at the same time. Even though I took third place, I celebrated and ran all the way to the first hurdle after the finish line. I kept going and jumping and clapping and throwing my hands up as I was running all the way to the hurdle. I was very happy as two weeks before I had placed second at NCAAs with a 49.75, and that was a very tough race for me. I wasn’t even close to Samuel Matete, and I had to give it my all to run that race. To come back two weeks later to run 48.60 and to make the U.S. team, which not too many people expected me to do, was a great feeling. I was truly introduced to track and field at the international level that year. In 1989 in Argentina, I don’t count that as much because we only travelled for one race and then returned to the U.S. But when I made that U.S. team in 1991, I ran many of the races on the European circuit even though I was a junior in college. Back then, college athletes would race the circuit, but we weren’t allowed to get paid though the meet directors would let us enter the races. I don’t see too much of that anymore. College athletes go pro these days. I ran so many races, at least four or five on the European circuit. I ran in France and at the World University Games in Sheffield, England. It felt great to be the World University Games champion and that felt like it was an easy race. After I ran that 48.60 at the U.S. Championships, I became consistent in the high 48s and low 49s. Prior to that, I put so much into my race at NCAAs, and it ended up only being a 49.75. I even felt that Samuel Matete was relaxed in front of me at 49.12. So, that U.S. third place was a breakthrough time for me. When I placed sixth in the world that year, it was tremendous for me. I was very happy. Aesthetically, I was racing on television and my friends were watching and saying, ‘You got clobbered.’ It didn’t bother me. I was happy. My friends don’t know about the sport of track and field, and they didn’t know how it was to be sixth in the world when the previous year I wasn’t even in the top twenty-five. 1991 was definitely a breakthrough year. I was mentored by Kevin and Danny, and we are all good friends to this day. Another member of the 1991 team, Andrew Valmon, become a mentor to me. The other athletes called me ‘Rookie’ because I had just turned twenty-one years old and had another year of eligibility at Georgia Tech. I wasn’t thinking about the Olympics prior to 1991 or becoming a World Champion. I was merely another very good college athlete. The 1991 summer caused me to think that I could place even higher at the World Championships, and I could go to the Olympics.
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As exciting as it was to make the World Championships team, what was it like at the 1992 Olympic Trials as Kevin Young in 47.89 and David Patrick in 48.01 finished comfortably in first and second place while you and McClinton Neal fought for that third spot on the team? How disappointing was it when Neal caught you just before the final hurdle and was able to move ahead and nip you 48.52 to 48.87 for the third and final Olympic team position?
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It’s weird as that year I was not as disappointed as people might have thought. I felt that fourth place was still very good. I was almost on the Olympic team. I was more disappointed that I had twisted my ankle two weeks prior to the Olympic Trials, and I was taking pain killers and had tape and ice around my ankle. That brought me down, but I tried to keep my spirits up. I got through those three races, the heats, semifinals and final and I thought that fourth place was only a little behind where I was the previous year when I was third at the U.S. Championships. So, I was okay with that. At that time, I began thinking about professional track and field. I thought that I could run as a pro for the next ten years and, if I could do that, I could make the U.S. national team consistently and I could place at Worlds and the Olympics. I wasn’t quite as disappointed as one might think.
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What that thought reminds me of isn’t a point I planned on asking but, when I interviewed Khadevis Robinson, the great 800-meter runner, he was fourth at his first U.S. Olympic Trials by less than a tenth of a second, the next time he made the team, at his third Olympic Trials he was fourth by three-hundredths of a second and his fourth time he made the team again. Both times when he was fourth, he had a mindset and, this is his quote, ‘A setback, is a setup, for a comeback.’ Khadevis said he lived with that mantra and is that similar to your thought process that, if you missed by a bit, that it gave you some fire in your approach?
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Yes, I think so. When you just described that to me, I believe that my mentality was a lot like that of Khadevis. He didn’t let it get him too down When we looked at things objectively, I was only a few inches behind McClinton Neal. I was thinking, ‘I can beat McClinton. Even though he beat me today, I can beat him.’ It was so close. I knew I was third the year before and now I was fourth, so I was right on the edge of making the team being third or fourth in the U.S. I knew I would get better in the future and could be first or second in the U.S. It would be different if I went from third at USAs in 1993 to eighth in 1994. When I was third in 1993, it was kind of a fluke. The fact that I was fourth the next year made me very optimistic about the future.
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In 1993 you made the World Championships team again and ended up in seventh in the final as Kevin Young in 47.18, Samuel Matete in 47.6 and Winthrop Graham in 47.62 were medalists. Then in 1994 you won your first USATF Championship in 48.41 as you led the entire race, looked very smooth, won by ten meters and almost topped your PR of 48.31 set earlier in the season in Bratislava. Was this race an indication that you were moving toward where you saw yourself?
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Exactly, and I always thought of improving my time in those years. It was fine to place well but I was happier in 1994 that I ran 47.70, while my 1993 best time was 48.39. And I didn’t just run that 47.70, but I broke 48 seconds several times during 1994. So, I was happy to be running those times relatively consistently. I felt like I had another breakthrough. My first breakthrough was in 1991 and my second breakthrough was in 1994.
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In 1994 from mid-June to late July you won ten races and topped that stretch with a 48.06 in Lucerne. Then you recorded eight sub-48s in 1994, one short of the record including that 47.70 in Linz, Austria to beat Winthrop Graham which was 1994’s fastest time. Did it help that you had graduated from Georgia Tech in 1993 and were able to concentrate and focus on training?
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I think that helped that I graduated and was focusing only on training. And I cooked more and when you cook your own food it makes you stronger, healthier and fit. I did have a lot more focus. I was what the sponsors call a ‘new athlete’ and I felt like a ‘new athlete.’ 1994 was a great year. Winning the American Championships was nice but that year what I was truly happy about was breaking that 48-second barrier and doing it consistently throughout the summer.
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You earned your first major title at the July, 1994 Goodwill Games in Saint Petersburg, Russia with your 47.86 time breaking Edwin Moses’ Games Record. You started from lane five with Samuel Matete outside you in lane six, made up the stagger before 200 meters, got a few meters on Sam Matete before he caught you at hurdle ten, and then you pulled away to win by a meter as he ran 47.98. What did you do after you were caught to find another gear to beat Sam?
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I don’t remember too many times that Sam beat me by leading the whole race. The times when Sam did beat me, he would pass me at the end. I was leading at least half the races where Sam got me at the end. That happened quite a few times during those years as Sam would make a late surge to come up even with me or be just a little behind me. He would close the gap. Then I was able to hold on by responding with a surge. I remember doing that at the Goodwill Games. Like I said, I was a new athlete. In college, I would lead Sam in races when he was running for Auburn, and I was running for Georgia Tech. I would lead him all the way around the track to the point where Coach Fowlkes and a few of my teammates would tease me about it. They would say, ‘He owns you! He owns you!’ It didn’t hurt my feelings because it was true. Sam was known for passing me at the end. Sometimes it was almost like I was anticipating it and expecting it. But at the Goodwill Games it was ‘Not today!’ When I raced Sam, I wasn’t happy because I was in front over hurdle nine. I wasn’t celebrating because Sam was getting ready to move. And then he comes, and I would just think that I could try to hold him off and put in another surge. That happened quite a few times during those years.
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The next year at the 1995 World Championships in Goteborg, Sweden, which you mentioned was held in cold weather, you won the Gold Medal narrowly ahead of Samuel Matete in a time of 47.98 seconds with Matete only five hundredths of a second back in 48.03. Can you take us through that race where you were out fast, made up the stagger on Sven Nylander within two hurdles, led off final turn while Diagana and Matete were battling for second, ran a strong last 35 meters after final hurdle and leaned to win over Sam by less than one meter?
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The wind was against us on the backstretch. When its like that in the 400-meter hurdles, it’s a long way around that track. It takes your energy. You’re trying to reach for thirteen steps against the wind and, after you get through the backstretch you are dead tired and are busting it through. I almost fell after the finish line. I watched that tape a few times and it shows my victory lap. I think that was at least ten minutes after the race because I remember being dead tired. I think they had me do some interviews and then had me go on my victory lap. I was very happy as being World Champion is the second greatest honor after winning the Olympics. I could tell that Sam, Diagana, and I were all spent after that race. We each gave it our all. It was tiring for all of us on that track.
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The following year was the Olympic year and, as you mentioned earlier, as great as winning the World Championships was, it was mentally your warmup for the Olympics. At the 1996 Olympic Trials the first seven athletes were all under 49 seconds and Bryan Bronson edged you by two tenths of a second as he ran 47.98 to your 48.18; 3. What was going through your mind as you were leading again, Bronson caught you at the ninth hurdle, and it seemed like you were the better technician over the hurdles while he was faster between the hurdles? And did this remind you that at the Olympics it wasn’t only the international competition, but also your own teammates?
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The 1996 year was interesting. It started with a small circuit of races around April and May. I finished second or third in those races to Bryan and to Sam. Those races fly under the radar because they are not televised here in the U.S. and are not covered much by American media. Later in the Olympic race coverage, Craig Masback mentioned that I had not been having a good year all throughout April and May. My fitness began to come around in June. For me to place second at the Olympic Trials wasn’t a disappointment. I saw myself on the way back to where I was because those early races weren’t good at all. Those times were when I started having problems with depression. I had been taking medicine and decided to stop. So, I was having issues with depression and medications. I stopped the medicines and went for it and decided I would muscle through the depression. So, the Olympic Trials was me on my way to running fast again. The races I lost were in the mid-49s. I saw that 48.18 at the Olympic Trials as a steppingstone. Then one of my biggest races was afterward in Paris when I ran 47.70 in front of Bryan and Sam. That was one of the races where I felt great. I didn’t feel too fatigued. I felt like I did in 1994 and 1995. That 47.70 in Paris was the last race before the Olympics. It was two or three weeks before the Olympics. I truly needed that victory, and I was very happy about that primarily because Sam and Bryan were in that race.
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At the 1996 Olympic Games, after cruising through the quarterfinals, you ran a 47.76 in the semifinals which must have made you feel ready for the final. And when I watched the final, it wasn’t as close as at Worlds as you led off the final turn by three to four meters. It seemed you were both focused and relaxed and Samuel Matete couldn’t make up any ground as you ran 47.54 with Sam at 47.78 and Calvin Davis at 47.96. Was that race much easier than Worlds the year before?
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All I can say is I felt great. I was in the greatest shape of my life, and it started with that race in Paris. When I ran that 47.70 after struggling all spring and not placing first at the Olympic Trials, I said to myself, ‘I am back.’ I wasn’t too fatigued after that race and that fitness and the shape I had achieved on about July tenth held all the way to the Olympic final on August first. I felt great from the Paris race to the Olympic prelims in 48.4 where I felt like I was jogging. In the semifinal I felt great and ran 47.76 without anyone near me. In the Olympic final I felt strong, I felt fast, and I felt confident. I was just in a zone at that time that started in Paris and lasted through all the rounds at the Olympics. Sam did beat me in my first race after the Olympics, but I beat him in Brussels. That was the best shape of my life and I’m fortunate to be in the best shape of my life around Olympic time.
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After crossing the line, what did it feel like to be Olympic champion, how enthusiastic was the crowd and can you describe when you were on the podium as Olympic champion and receiving the Olympic Gold Medal?
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It felt great. I had never seen a crowd that big. We always talk about how we sell out stadiums in Europe and, when we do, the biggest stadium is usually fifty thousand people. The Zurich stadium only holds about twenty-five thousand. But here I was in the U.S. with eighty thousand fans. I was looking around at the crowd. There was a big roar from the crowd. The victory lap felt like more of a special moment than being on the podium. Someone in the first or second row threw me a flag. It was tightly folded like the standard way you are supposed to fold a flag. Since it was folded tightly, they were able to throw it as if it was a ball. And I caught it. I wrapped it around myself. I was wondering if I was supposed to jog the lap because I was too tired to run. The officials kept saying, ‘You have time to walk,’ and I said, ‘Great.’ There was this whole group of photographers taking pictures. Victor Sailer was one and he worked for Reebok. Sam and Calvin walked the victory lap with me and that was a very special moment. We didn’t stand on the podium on the same day as I won the Gold. We went back the next day. I remember being on the podium and it was a great feeling of accomplishment and a feeling of serenity. But I remember thinking to myself, ‘Am I going to cry?’ As my hand was on my heart and they were playing the National Anthem, I was wondering, ‘Maybe I’m supposed to cry now?’ I didn’t feel tears coming, but I did feel very happy.
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We mentioned how many races you raced each year and I’ve been to the stadiums in Zurich and Monaco and know how amazing it is to watch as a fan. You had over a dozen circuit wins including three times at Weltklasse Zurich twice each at the Oslo Bislett Games, Paris and Lucern, plus victories in London, Belgium and Osaka. Do any of these stand out and when you look back, how exciting was it to perform in front of these knowledgeable and rampant track and field fans? And is one of the standout races from Zurich in 1995 as you ran 47.65 to narrowly edge Samuel Matete’s 47.67 clocking?
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It feels good. There was one year I went to Zurich and when I got out of the taxi cab with my bag, I started walking toward the front desk of this very nice hotel. I began pulling out my identification and said, ‘Hi, I’m Derrick Adkins.’ The attendant said, ‘Yes, we know. Here is your key.’ I thought, ‘Wow!’ They were getting it ready as they saw me walking toward the desk. That is only one of the instances like that. But I remember for some reason I loved being in Switzerland. I loved the environment. I loved the atmosphere. I always felt good in my races in Switzerland, and I don’t know why. That 47.65 felt great even though I only beat Sam by two hundredths. I felt great during that race. Sometimes we just feel fast and fluid. I also ran a 47.68 in Lucern which is a small meet at a small track. I wasn’t even trying to run that fast. I was trying to win the race. The top stars like Sam were not there and I won by a lot. I figured I was winning the race and making a little money and then I looked up at the clock and saw 47.68. That’s another time that I felt very fast and strong. Then in Lausanne I equaled my personal best. That race was interesting because I placed second to Stephan Diagana in 1995 during the peak of my career. That’s one of the few races where one of my competitors led me after the first two hundred meters. Stephan took off and ended up running 47.37 and I was second in 47.54 which I equaled the next year in Atlanta. I was not disappointed. At the press conference afterwards, one of the commentators asked me, ‘What do you think you did wrong today?’ It was almost like asking, ‘Why did you lose to Stephan?’ I said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I ran the fastest I have ever run. I ran the perfect race, but Stephan ran faster.’ I ran my PR, so how could I get too down about that? I think that goes back to being objective. There is a difference in running purely for place and trying to be in front of everyone no matter the time. I felt like I did everything right in that race, and I did to have a PR. Then I wondered and worried that, if Stephan was going to continue to run forty-seven low on a consistent basis, is he replacing Sam and me? But that caused me to stay focused on my training and to ensure I was doing everything right. I knew I couldn’t become lazy because I knew Stephan was here and it may not be Sam and me winning all the races. Stephan didn’t end up doing that. In 1996 he was injured. After that race, it went back to Samuel and me dominating the event.
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We haven’t talked about indoor racing and you had standout races in New York City where you were a two-time winner of the Millrose Games in the 500 meters at Madison Square Garden having run 1:01.71 in 1995 to beat Kevin Lyles of Seton Hall’s 1:01.8 by only the slightest of margins. Were you off the front and was he trying to reel you in? And how different is it having to run an extra thirteen seconds even though you don’t have the ten hurdles?
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That race felt good. I remember how much I loved running the five hundred meters at Madison Square Garden. There was something about the fact that it was in New York. My agent, Charlie Wells, would tell me that the top four hundred meter hurdlers don’t run on these boards. He was suggesting that I didn’t run. But I said, ‘Charlie, it’s New York. I grew up running indoors. I’m not afraid of being six feet, three inches on these little tracks.’ I remember that race with Kevin and I think that Mark Everett was also in the race. I was afraid of racing Mark because he had run around a 1:00.1 at Millrose. I didn’t think I could run that fast. But I raced Mark twice in the mid-1990s and was able to place in front of Mark. I totally enjoyed running five hundred meters. At Millrose I always felt relaxed the first part of the race. I remember battling with Kevin Lyles every inch to the finish line. That was a race I was very happy about. It was great running in New York with that big crowd.
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FORMATIVE YEARS AND HIGH SCHOOL RUNNING In what sports did you take part as a youth, how did you start running with the Lakeview Speedsters and what was the influence of your dad since he was a collegiate athlete?
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In those days, my neighborhood was a predominantly African-American, working class neighborhood on Long Island. There was a push to keep kids off the streets after school. There was a Lakeview Youth Foundation. There was a great baseball league and basketball tournaments in the summer. They started the Lakeview Speedsters. My sister and I were asked to join, and it was more of an effort to keep us occupied, kind of like a Police Action League dynamic as opposed to trying to create superstar athletes. My parents said we had to do something, and my dad thought that track was a good idea. So, we dove into it – my dad, my sister and me. With a couple of other parents in the neighborhood, my dad and they became the coaches of the Lakeview Speedsters. I only qualified to go to Nationals at age nine and ten in the standing broad jump. I tried out for the New York team in other events to try to make the team to go to Hershey Nationals. I couldn’t make it in any event except the standing broad jump. In middle school, I competed with both the Lakeview Speedsters and the middle school team. One benefit for me was that the club coaches and the school coaches got along because they were the same coaches. Later, when I was in high school, the Lakeview Speedsters became the Long Island Alliance Track Club because we invited kids from outside of Lakeview and the surrounding neighborhoods like Freemont, Uniondale and Elma. It became a team from our section of Long Island which is central Nassau County. We had kids from various high schools, and I would race kids from Uniondale and Freeport. It was tough competition.
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How did you transition to focus on hurdles and what was the role of your father, Earl, who was a hurdler for Morgan State, in your development?
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It was in middle school that I started with hurdles. The short race was eighty meters over only three hurdles and they were very low. That is when my dad said I should run hurdles and I started in middle school in fifth grade. I did well. The middle school competition was not tough at all. You didn’t have to be great to win races. When I was in the eighth grade, my dad suggested that I run the 400-meter hurdles. We had a dynamic in our school that let the eighth graders who were exceptional run for the high school team. That was legal and wasn’t against the rules. Eighth graders could be on the high school team and could run five years of high school track. I was getting a little disappointed when I ran the club meets because they were difficult for me to win. My sister was blazing fast and winning everything in the New York area. I was disappointed in seventh, eighth and ninth grade and it was because I wasn’t maturing at the rate of the other kids as far as puberty. In ninth grade, I was that ninth grader that kind of looks like a sixth grader. I was five feet four inches tall going into ninth grade and five feet, five inches coming out of ninth grade. I only weighed about a hundred, twenty-five pounds. I wasn’t maturing like the other kids who were going through puberty and developing muscles. My dad told me that my best chance of winning races was in the four hundred meter hurdles. He said that when I was in eighth grade. He taught me how to train for and race the four hundred meter hurdles and I ran sixty-five seconds. That was decent for eighth grade, but I didn’t have the speed of the other kids. I had to muscle through. Everyone was afraid of the four hundred meter hurdles but I wasn’t.
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How much did you drop your times your freshman and sophomore years of high school and did you finally have a growth spurt?
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I ran fifty-nine seconds in ninth grade and fifty-seven seconds in tenth grade. Then I went through puberty and, at the end of the tenth grade I was five feet, ten inches. I was six feet, one inch at the end of eleventh grade, six feet two after twelfth grade and grew to six feet three in college. There was rapid physical development.
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What were you doing in terms of training such as strength work, repeat intervals and hurdle work and how good was the track you used for training?
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We ran on a cinder track, but that didn’t hurt my training. After training on the cinder track, when we went to meets run on rubberized tracks, we felt great. The training was good. My dad was the assistant coach. The head coach, Colbert Britt, was very good. He coached for forty-three years from 1972 to 2015 and coached many individual and team state champions during that time. He was very successful. We did a lot of repeats, but we didn’t run further than 400 meters in practice. We ran many repeats of 150 and 200 meters. Sometimes we would do 300-meter repeats. I didn’t run cross country. We got in shape for running the 400 meters by running repetitive shorter distances and it worked. Maybe I could have done better if I had done standard 400-meter training. I ran the 110-meter hurdles. My best automatic time was 14.05. In practice I would often run like the start of the 400-meter hurdles race and do the first five hurdles at race pace over and over again. I never did more than the first five hurdles, so I was running hurdle repeats for 200 meters. At the races, I muscled it through the last five hurdles. I had my first five hurdles very rhythmic and very down pat. That’s what our training was like. We were training more for speed. We did a lot of 150s, and we were expected to muscle it when we got to the meets.
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You were the New York State champion at 400-meter hurdles in both 1987 and 1988, with best times those years of 52.65 and 50.71. Was there anybody close your junior year as the next year your time was out in another zip code?
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There wasn’t anyone close either my junior year or senior year. At the State meet I ran in the 53s my junior year and in the 52s my senior year and no one was close. After that, I went to the Empire State Games which were held in summer. I ran the 52.65 my junior year at those Games in July. Prior to that I ran 52.9 at the Loucks Games and 53 flat on a very hard concrete track at the New York State Championships.
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You mentioned the Loucks Games, where you won the 400-meter hurdles in 1987 in 52.90 and 1988 in 51.40 at White Plains High School. Did you know that your meet record of 51.40 set in 1988 still stands forty-five years later and the closest anyone has come to it was two-time champ Rodriques Pfister of Ballou in 1995 at 52.41, still a full second slower than you?
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I knew that the meet record had not been broken, but I didn’t know that stat about no one coming close. That is awesome. Good for me (laughing).
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When you wrapped up your high school competition, what colleges were you considering and why did you decide to attend Georgia Tech?
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I was always a very good student and was focused on academics. I was serious about going to a college that was very academically competitive. I narrowed my choice down to Georgetown, Rice and Georgia Tech. Rice had a good sprint squad back then. I also visited William and Mary, so I only took four visits. I could have gone to one of the powerhouses during those years which were LSU, Arkansas and UCLA. But I didn’t want to. I don’t know why, but I felt somewhat intimidated about being around a lot of stars, especially the Arkansas team and UCLA team. UCLA had run a four by 400-meter relay in 2:59.91 at the 1988 NCAA Championships. I narrowed it down to the three schools I mentioned. In high school, I enjoyed science and math more than the humanities. I was told that, if you aim for science and math, you should go for engineering. I further narrowed my choice down to Georgetown and Georgia Tech and there were two reasons I didn’t go to Georgetown. For one, they didn’t have engineering and I was told that I should major in physics and engineering. Number two is that it seemed that Coach Gagliano at Georgetown was kind of hinting that I should transition to the 800 meters. I didn’t like that. Georgia Tech wanted me to run the 400-meter hurdles, 110-meter hurdles and with equal emphasis on the high hurdles which I loved. James Purvis had just won the 55-meter hurdles at the indoor NCAAs and the 110-meter hurdles at the outdoor NCAAs. I met him on my visit to Georgia Tech and he was anther Long Island guy. My dad liked Georgia Tech because he was a big James Purvis fan. I met Antonio McKay on my visit to Georgia Tech and these guys all ran from the 400 meters and on down. No 800s. So, those are the reasons I chose Georgia Tech.
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COLLEGIATE COMPETITION I can probably relate to your transition to college as I came out of high school in Miami and went to Appalachian State in the North Carolina mountains, was a long way from home, and didn’t even go home until Christmas. You ran strong at the 1989 NCAAs your freshman year, finishing fifth in 50.6 with best times of 50.25 and 14.27 and well at the 1990 NCAAs your sophomore year in sixth at 50.32 with a best time of 49.53. Even though you were improving, how was it for you transitioning to college in Atlanta athletically, academically and being away you’re your home on Long Island?
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It wasn’t bad at all. It would have been different if I was moving to a rural area in the south. But moving to dead center Atlanta, we also had quite a few New Yorkers on the team. There were James Purvis and Dirk Morris who both had graduated but were still training with the team and racing in open meets. There were quite a few athletes from Brooklyn Tech in New York which was a highly-rated academic school. I also got along very well with the members of the team. Two of my best friends were New Yorkers, Rich Thompson and Joe McDonald. Georgia Tech liked to recruit from New York. The chemistry between these guys and me was very, very good. I fit in very well and with me that’s not normal to fit in with a group of males. I don’t know why but there was good chemistry at Georgia Tech as I felt that socially I fit in like a glove. That helps a lot. It helps a runner to perform better in track and field when you are a happy person.
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We talked earlier about the 1991 NCAA Championships your junior year when you felt flat and Samuel Matete topped you 49.12 seconds to 49.75 seconds and then how at the 1992 NCAA Championships your senior year you fell while leading and got up to finish eighth in 51.67. I did notice that you kept improving your 110-meter high hurdles time and got down to 13.69 your senior year. Did your increased speed over the high hurdles and in the flat 100 meters help you to feel smoother and faster in the 400-meter hurdles?
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It did and I tell people that all the time. I used to tell Dalilah Muhammed and other young athletes, especially in high school, who didn’t want to run the high hurdles, you’re not a 400-meter hurdler. Just call yourself a hurdler. You’ve got to run the 55-meter and 60-meter hurdles indoors, the longer high hurdles outdoors and the 400-meter hurdles because you never know where you are going to excel. For me, I loved doing the 110-meter hurdles and I felt a lot of speed my senior year. That’s one of the reasons why I had that collision at NCAAs. I had so much speed approaching the hurdles and I wasn’t used to it. I felt so much speed that I was able to run that 13.69 in the highs at the ACC Championships in Tallahassee, Florida. It didn’t feel like I was straining like a short sprinter who may be straining from beginning to end. And then when I went to the 400-meter hurdles, it felt much smoother, and I felt much more fluid in the end. I was more relaxed as I ran. My coach would always say and repeat, ‘Quick and relaxed. Quick and relaxed. You have to be quick and relaxed when you run.’ So, that helped a lot, and I enjoyed doing both races.
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You mentioned running at the ACC Championships and you had great success there, winning four straight years in the 400-meter hurdles, being an ACC four-time relay champ and your team’s best finish was third place outdoors in 1989. How much fun competing as a team in the ACC and were there any memorable races such as a relay leg you raced to pull out a victory?
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I feel like I wasn’t exceptional on the relays, but I was good, and I held my own. I remember when Derek Mills came to Georgia Tech going into my junior year, he immediately replaced me as anchor, and I didn’t mind that at all. I didn’t want the pressure of running anchor on the relay. There was something about when Derek Mills came in that we became a better relay squad. I was running faster my junior year when I was moved to third leg on the relay. We became dominant that year, but we didn’t make it to NCAAs. We missed it by very little. The next year, Octavious Terry came in and, no matter how well we did, I never felt I was the exceptional one. Derek Mills was because he went under forty-four seconds a few times on his split. I felt like I met expectations but didn’t beat expectations too often on the relay.
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Let’s discuss the 1992 NCAA outdoor four by 400-meter relay that Georgia Tech won in 2:59.95. I watched it a couple times this week and it was interesting because all the announcers talked about was UCLA’s 2:59.91 time from 1988 and how Baylor and UCLA were so fast that there might be two teams going under three minutes. Georgia Tech was not mentioned. The way the race unfolded, Octavious Terry got Georgia Tech out in 45.6, Julian Amedee ran a strong 45.3 to keep Georgia Tech in position behind Baylor, USC and Ohio State, and then you went from fourth to second in your final 100 meters to give Derek Mills the baton seven to eight meters behind with a lap to go. But Derek was Bronze Medalist in the open 400 meters and had the Silver Medalist from Baylor in front of him and Gold Medalist from UCLA behind him. What was the race like for you as you watched Octavious and Julian, the great leg you ran, and then your thoughts as Derek closed half the gap on the final curve and won going away by seven to eight meters?
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I felt good going around the track. When I was behind those three guys on the first two hundred meters of my leg, I felt like I could pass at least two of them and take myself from fourth to second place. But I was surprised at how well each of my teammates achieved. All of them overachieved. All of them beat expectations. Octavious never came close to opening up in 45.6. He might have beat his personal best by a second. Julian was a walk on. He had never come close to running 45.3. I did well and I passed the guys, but my split of 45.0 as what I consistently ran and had been running. I feel like it was Octavious, Julian and Derek that all beat expectations in that race. When I passed the baton to Derek, I thought, ‘This is not good. Derek isn’t going to pass Dion, and Quincy Watts is going to pass Derek.’ That’s how it felt. I barely watched the final leg. I was laying on my back, not even watching. But I think everyone thought he couldn’t keep Quincy behind him. Dion and Quincy had both beat Derek in the open 400 meters and Derek hadn’t split 43 seconds before that. So, my three teammates beat all expectations, and each ran faster than they had ever run. I ran about what I can run. That was a great moment because I don’t think anyone had predicted we would win. All of my teammates admitted afterward that they didn’t think we were going to win. And Derek didn’t think we were going to win until maybe with two hundred meters to go that it started dawning on him that we could win. When you don’t think you are going to win and you do win, that’s a great feeling.
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After the race, the four of you got together in a tight circle and were squatting down with your hands together in the middle. Were you praying or thanking God and what was the conversation at that moment?
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We were praying. We prayed both before and after every race. Derek would always lead the prayer. It became a ritual for us to pray before and after every race. Even in that race we got together and did what we always did. Another thing is that we had very good team chemistry. We were all good friends, liked each other and got along well. There is something about having very good morale on the team that helps you perform.
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WRAPUP AND FINAL THOUGHTS You received quite a few awards and recognitions throughout your career. In high school you were the 1988 New York Gatorade Track and Field Award Winner, in college a six-time All-American and 1991 ACC Outdoor MVP, and in 2017 you were inducted into the Nassau County High School Athletics Hall of Fame. Academically at Georgia Tech you were inducted into the Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni. How does it feel to receive these recognitions for what you have done in athletics, academics or both?
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It feels great. All throughout high school and college I was very ambitious both academically and athletically. The feeling is that I was accomplishing all my dreams and I was happy about every single honor achieved during those years. It’s funny because even when those things are achieved, I didn’t know I would get to win at the Olympics. Not that I didn’t think I could, but I didn’t count on it and didn’t bet on it. There are some people who go into the Olympics very confident they are going to win that Gold Medal. I knew I had a chance, but it wasn’t until I won some of those big races in 1994 that I thought I could win a Gold Medal. Again, it felt great to get honors for what I accomplished.
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In 2002 the ACC announced their 50th Anniversary team which was a fifty member squad. There were eight Yellow Jackets on the team including Antonio McKay and Angelo Taylor. But how cool was it that in addition to you, two of your three relay teammates, Derek Mills and Octavius Terry, both were named to the 50th anniversary team with you?
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That was awesome. Those two guys were younger than me and that is when our team transitioned to a higher level. Derek Mills hadn’t even run 45 seconds for 400 meters his freshman year. He was a 46-second runner. He skipped a whole second and went from 46 seconds to 44 seconds during his sophomore year. Octavious ended up running faster than me in college. He went on to win the NCAAs in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 48.30 compared to my collegiate best of 48.60. I was very proud of those guys. It felt great to not be just an individual star like my first two years in college and my time in high school, but to be on a team with people who were just as accomplished.
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After your running career ended you stayed close to the sport as Director of the Armory Track and Field Center from 2006-2011, supporter of the Friendship Games from 1989-2016 and you started the annual Derrick Adkins Classic in 1999. You also served as a member of the Lakeview Youth Federation, coached track at Columbia University, served as an outreach representative and manager of training for the New York Road Runners, and are now coaching at the Central Park Track Club in New York. How rewarding has it been to stay involved in the sport and with youth?
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| DA |
It’s been great and I receive a lot of recognition in New York City and on Long Island for the work I’ve done at The Armory. I’ve recently started going back to The Armory quite a bit as I’m coaching for the Central Park Track Club. The coaches, officials and administrators give me so much honor every day. When I go to track meets on Long Island, the coaches give me so much honor. There is even a street named after me in my hometown of Lakeview. I’ve received so much recognition and I believe it isn’t based solely on having won the Olympic Gold Medal, but I’ve done things in the area of youth recreation whether it was with the Lakeview Federation, the Derrick Adkins Classic, the Friendship Games and showing up at the high school meets and working at The Armory. I believe a lot of people in the area appreciate me for all of those things.
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| GCR: |
Sometimes the success of those we coach is more rewarding than our own success. How exciting has it been to watch the success of those you have coached as they set personal bests, broke school records, won conference championships and NCAA medals and what are primary similarities and differences in motivating yourself versus others?
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| DA |
It is very similar, and it feels wonderful when my athletes achieve. As a coach, I always worry if my athletes are going to run faster than they ran in prior meets. It is a wonderful feeling for me at age fifty-two. These aren’t kids. I mentor adults. Even though they are in their twenties, they look up to me like I’m a big brother or an uncle. It makes me more disciplined as I want to be a good example all the time. I don’t want to be late for practice. If they’re late, okay, but I don’t want them to see me late. I live a life where I’m thinking about them all the time. Sometimes they get into conversations and use a lot of slang and profanity, but I never do. I might have with my peers who are my age, but around the athletes I coach I am very straightforward, and I want to be a good example all the time. It feels good to have adults looking up to me. One of the best feelings is when my athletes beat my expectations. There is a great video on Flo Track with Carl Lewis watching the four by 100-meter relay team he was coaching at the University of Houston. His athletes beat his expectations and he had this odd look on his face as he was saying, ‘That can’t be right. That can’t be right.’ He looked at the time on the results board and that’s what he said. But those around him were saying, ‘No Carl! It’s true!’ The look on his face was so funny that it went viral. So, that’s one of the greatest feelings when your athletes beat expectations. I’ve enjoyed coaching the young athletes I coach at Central Park and the masters runners as well. They are appreciative, very motivational and inspiring, and a pleasure to work with.
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| GCR: |
What are your thoughts about the balance that is often hard to find when an athlete has a school coach and a club coach?
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| DA |
I tell people to this day that when the club coaches and school coaches get along, that’s an awesome situation. I coached Delilah Muhammed some in high school. I wasn’t her coach because she ran for Cardoso. But her coach called me and asked me to stand beside him as he coached her and to offer tips. I was a mentor to Delilah all through high school and college before she won the Olympic Gold Medal. One of the strengths of her situation was that she ran for a New York team plus for Cardoso High School and the coaches got along and talked about how they were not going to step on each other’s toes. They worked out her training schedule together, so she was not overtrained by trying to fulfil the obligations of both teams and that led to her excelling. I tell the coaches I interact with that they have to get along. Often the coaches are fighting, and the kids are hurting. If we create a situation where everyone gets along, the kids, like Delilah or me, are going to excel.
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| GCR: |
When someone achieves like you did, winning a Gold Medal on the world stage, there is often the chance to meet celebrities and world leaders. You had the opportunity to meet Nelson Mandela in Cape Town in 1999 and former U.S. President, Bill Clinton. What are your memories of those meetings?
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| DA |
Meeting Nelson Mandela in 1999 was a special moment. It was a special time in my life. I enjoyed going to South Africa. We went for two weeks to run three meets. Usually, when we ran in Europe, we would race every other day. We raced and travelled. I was in South Africa with a small group of athletes. Nelson Mandela wanted to meet primarily Marion Jones. He heard that American athletes were in town and, when he heard that, he asked to meet us. His representatives called our group and asked us to come to his Presidential mansion. That was a great moment to meet Nelson Mandela. It was very inspiring. My mother loves that picture of Nelson Mandela and me more than any other picture. It’s all over two or three places in her home. That was great. I met President Clinton twice and that was special as well. I didn’t meet Bill Clinton after the Olympics. When he called American athletes to come to the White House, I had a race in either Monaco or France. It was going to be a big payday for me, so I chose money over meeting Bill Clinton. Then I ended up meeting him twice on two different occasions. It was great. Bill Clinton told me he was trying to lose some weight and he was doing it for his daughter, Chelsea. He said she was putting pressure on him to do more running and lose more weight and he was going to keep trying. When I met both Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton, they were as I expected them to be. They were very personable.
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| GCR: |
Speaking of keeping healthy, Derrick, what do you typically do now for health, fitness and running?
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| DA |
I did a lot of running up until about this time last year. After that I only walk. But I do a lot of walking. I walk about twenty miles a week. I also do a lot of calisthenics at home. It’s funny that I was super ambitious as an athlete and very much willing to feel the pain that you have to put yourself through to excel. What’s interesting to me now is how I’m not that way today. I’m still in relatively good shape, but I’m like a different person. When I would go out and run my two-mile runs and three-mile runs, the motivation wasn’t there like it was when I was an athlete.
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| GCR: |
When you are giving a speech and people are looking to you for advice or inspiration and you sum up in a minute or two the major lessons you have learned during your life from the discipline of running and academics, the camaraderie of the running community, and overcoming adversity, what you would like to share with my readers that will help them on the pathway to reaching their potential athletically and as a person, what I have heard you describe as ‘The Olympic Mentality?’
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| DA |
One thing I share, and I have to tell my athletes this all the time is, ‘I’m very interested in you reaching your personal potential. Try not to measure yourselves so much against others. You have genetic potential as an athlete, and no one knows what that is. We’re trying to get you to that potential.’ Especially for my short sprinters who all want to run the one hundred meters in ten seconds flat, I tell them I am going to train them, but a lot of the results have to do with genetics when it comes to those sub-ten second one-hundred-meter runners. I am not the coach who will get angry with a runner who underperforms because that’s not how Coach Hinsdale was with me and my teammates. He would call us into his office, and we would talk it out kind of like meeting with a therapist. That’s how I am with my athletes. Whether it is on the track or with anything in life, giving it your all and doing your best is a good personal way to have about all things. I’ve had jobs where I wasn’t crazy about the mission of the job, but I still gave it my all because it’s a good way to be. I tell my athletes that is what its about. It isn’t as much being that person who is recognized for defeating others but how do you become your best self? I ended up becoming best in the world and winning the Olympic Championship and World Championship but, at the end of the day, I was just trying to become my best self. I was thinking of how fast I could run, and I wanted to run that time. Fortunately for me, becoming my best led to me becoming THE best, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I tell the young athletes I work with, if you reach your potential, then I’m happy with you. But, if I see that athletes have habits that won’t let them reach their potential because their habits aren’t good, if I can discern laziness or bad habits, then I tell the athletes they won’t reach their potential if they continue in those ways.
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Inside Stuff |
| Hobbies/Interests |
I’m very active in my church and that is a big part of my life. I like hiking and I like snow skiing. I don’t do much drumming now because I don’t have a drum set. I’m happy for the time I spent learning how to play the drums when I was young
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| Nicknames |
My parents are the only ones that called me ‘Bo,’ and I don’t even know where that came from
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| Favorite movies |
My favorite movie is ‘The Gladiator,’ however, I tend to not like those types of action movies. There is something about ‘The Gladiator’ that I like. I do like comedies like ‘Friday and ‘Next Friday.’ I don’t have any ‘go to’ guys in comedy. I like all of them, whether it’s Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Kevin Hart or David Chappelle. I won’t go to a standup comedy show but, if they do a movie, I’m likely to go and see it. I just saw ‘Air’ and it was good. I saw ‘Creed 3’ and thought that was good. I enjoy historical movies like the James Brown biography, ‘Get Up,’ the Jackie Robinson film, ’42,’ and the Aretha Franklin movie ‘Respect.’ If it’s a real story, I’m more likely to be interested. I’m a big Denzel Washington fan and enjoy his movies. I’m not a fan of many specific actors in Hollywood but, every time a Denzel movie comes out, I’ll go and watch every single one
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| Favorite TV shows |
The way they do TV shows now is so much different than the way it used to be. I liked a lot of sitcoms back then like ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and ‘The Brady Bunch.’ I liked the old cartoons like ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘Bugs Bunny’ much more than the newer cartoons. I was into some other comedy shows like ‘Different Strokes,’ ‘The Cosby Show,’ and ‘Facts of Life.’ When I got older, I stopped watching television series. When I do watch much television now, I watch documentaries and love historical films. I saw one recently about Bill Russell
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| TV reality show dream |
They say the first reality show was ‘Cops.’ The first one I began watching was ‘The Real World’ on MTV. But I have no desire whatsoever to be on a reality show
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| Favorite music |
I’m so much into the church that I only listen to Christian music. A lot of people will say that is extreme and I thought it was extreme when my pastor first said that is how it should be. But I like it now. I listen to Gospel music and Christian Contemporary music. I listen to Christian Rap and Christian Reggae. So, I listen to Christian music only, not that I have a problem with other types of music, but it’s like being a vegan and cleansing your soul by only taking in that which you believe is clean and holy. So, that’s the focus of my music listening
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| Favorite books |
One of my favorite books was ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.’ It’s not so much that I agreed with his earlier thoughts that were so much about black supremacy. What I and a lot of others appreciate about Malcolm X was his transition. He transitioned from a criminal to someone who was extremely religious, but sort of in a cultish sense that included black supremacy, into more of a human rights advocate. He put down his black supremacy and was becoming more mainstream and that’s when he was assassinated. The way he speaks through his thoughts and his transitioning throughout his life is something I truly enjoyed reading years ago. I like autobiographies most definitely and don’t read much fiction. I’m listening to the autobiography of Ghandhi as I listen to audiobooks these days. I listened to two of Colin Powell’s books and one by John Thompson, the basketball coach
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| First cars |
When I first began driving when I was in the twelfth grade, I drove my mother’s old Pontiac Grand Prix. When I started making money as an athlete around age twenty-four, I was into the fancy car groove, and I bought an Acura. Then I won a Mercedes at the 1995 World Championships. So, I drove that Mercedes for a while and then I drove a Range Rover. Next I didn’t see a need anymore to drive luxury cars, so I drove a Honda Accord for a while and then a Ford Explorer. When I was young, I got the luxury car thing out of my system
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| Current car |
I don’t drive a car now because I live in Manhattan and a lot of people here don’t drive cars. But, prior to moving here, I had a Hyundai Sonata
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| First jobs |
After my freshman year in high school, they hired students to work as janitors during the summer. We were supposed to scrub down the whole school – the floors and the walls. That was the hardest job I ever had. For $3.35 an hour with no air conditioning in the school, that was drudgery. Then I learned after that most jobs weren’t as hard as that one. I worked for Roy Rogers fast food, and I liked that job. I was cooking chicken in the back kitchen
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| Halloween memories |
I don’t remember any of my costumes. The last time I trick-or-treated was when I was in middle school. When it’s Halloween time, I do buy candy for the kids that come by
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| Family |
My mom, Carole, was very, very positive and instilled positivity into my sister, Dianne, and me. She wanted us to always be optimistic and to always believe in ourselves. She ingrained that into us and that helped me a lot as an athlete. I received the physical knowledge from my dad and my mom gave me a quiet confidence. I wasn’t a boastful trash-talker. But I had a quiet confidence that I could do it. Even when I would lose races, I would stay positive, like when we were talking about the thoughts of Khadevis Robinson. I would stay positive about the future. Immediately after losing, I would think, ‘I’m going to do better soon.’ My mother ingrained that in me, and, without that, I don’t think I would have achieved what I did in track and field. My sister was the first athlete I looked up to. We are one year apart. When I was seven and she was eight, she admittedly started winning races from that age all the way up to the end of high school. I can remember being in my young years in middle school and simply wanting to be as good as she was. I saw all the adoration she was getting for winning races, and I looked up to her. She ended up placing third in the 55 meters at indoor Nationals in 1987. Carol Smith, now Carol Smith-Gilbert was first, Carla Guidry was second, my sister was third and Esther Jones was fourth. My sister went to Texas Southern University. I believe that my sister could have run at the Olympic or World level just like Carla and Esther. She doesn’t mind me saying that she had contracted ovarian cancer. She is very fortunate that she survived as the doctors had given her a twenty-three percent chance to live. She lost weight and went from one hundred and forty to only ninety pounds. By the grace of God, she was able to survive, and her health has been fine ever since. It was tough for her to gain her track and field strength and speed and endurance back. I think she could have been a World Class athlete. I have an older brother, Jeffrey, who is nine years older than me, and he didn’t compete in track. We’ve always had a good relationship and I’ve always looked up to my brother as well
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| Pets |
We never were without a pet when I was growing up because my mother loves dogs. We always had at least two dogs. I like dogs a little bit, but not as much as my mother does. When I began competing professionally in track and field and was about twenty-four or twenty-five years old, I bought a house and I felt like it was so weird for me to be in this big building by myself. It was just me after going from living with a bunch of college roommates. I bought a Great Dane. His name was ‘Buster.’ He was my height on two feet. He would jump up and put his paws on my shoulders and look me square in the eye. They tend to not live as long as other dogs, but he lived to be twelve years old. That’s the only dog I had. I haven’t had a dog in a long time
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| Favorite breakfast |
I often don’t eat breakfast. But when I’m hungry in the morning, I’ll cook sausage and eggs. It’s real simple. I crave a lot of protein all the time
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| Favorite meal |
My favorite dinner meal often changes. I like oxtails here in New York as there are a lot of Jamaican restaurants that serve oxtails with plantains, rice, peas and cabbage. That’s probably my favorite dinner meal
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| Favorite beverages |
I try to drink as much water as possible. Outside of water, I love apple juice and orange juice
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| First running memories |
I remember running in the elementary school field day. My sister was the fastest kid in the school. She was in the fourth grade, and I was in the third grade. She beat all the girls and boys in the school. I was maybe the third or fourth fastest amongst all the kids in the school. Then we began running track and field. Like I said, I began running sprints. I would win some sprint races, but I didn’t do as well as I did in the standing broad jump. I remember watching the 1984 Olympics on TV when I was fourteen years old. I was going into my ninth-grade year. Right then and there, and I told Carl Lewis this recently, I became a different person after watching the 1984 Olympics. Prior to that, I was just another kid that was enjoying a sport. I wanted to do pretty well and wanted to win races. But after the 1984 Olympics I became ultra-driven to where track and field was top of mind with me all the time. Even to this day, I remember the shifting in ambition. The amount of time that I thought about becoming a champion in track and field increased after watching the 1984 Olympics. I remember watching Carl Lewis and others and they didn’t just win races. It was their form and their technique. They did it with so much style and grace
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| Running heroes |
It’s interesting how I still look up to those athletes from the 1984 Olympics more than any other athletes I have seen. I think it’s because I was so young when I started admiring them. There was Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses, plus Alonzo Babers, Antonio McKay, Evelyn Ashford, Valerie Brisco-Hooks, Greg Foster and Roger Kingdom. Those were the first track athletes I looked up to and that has stayed with me to this day. I became a different person, very serious in my training, after watching the 1984 Olympics. My father shared with me the history of track and field. I was born in 1970, but my father taught me the history and that caused me to become fans of John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Larry James, Lee Evans, Bob Beamon and Ralph Boston. I was very good at studying the history of track and field and became fans of them later. Outside of track and field, I was very much a fan of Lynn Swann. I don’t watch other sports now and I don’t know why. But, when I was young, I watched football and baseball. I liked the New York Yankees and Reggie Jackson. I liked the Steelers and Lynn Swann, Franco Harris and Terry Bradshaw. When I became ultra-driven in track, I stopped watching other sports and I turned into a one track mind. I haven’t watched many other sports ever since and, of course, my male friends think I’m weird because of that. The Super Bowl will be taking place and I don’t even know who is playing. I had to ask friends what teams were the last two in the Final Four basketball. I don’t know what that’s about and don’t know why. Its not like I have a disdain for those sports. My interest in watching those sports just left
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| Greatest running moments |
If I had to put them in order, my greatest moment at the time was making that 1991 World Championship team. So, my greatest moment in athletics up to then was placing third. It was a transition to World Class, and it was a surprise. Then I have to say that my greatest running moment was winning the Olympics. That is obvious and is my greatest running moment. So, second was making that 1991 World Championship team. Third would be winning the 1995 World Championships. Next in fourth would be winning the 1992 NCAA four by 400-meter relay with Georgia Tech. Fifth would be in 1987, when I was in eleventh grade, as I went from 57 seconds to 52 seconds in one year and ascended to number one in the state of New York. It was a great time. The race I would point to that year is the Empire State Games where I ran that 52.6. That made me the top eleventh-grader in the nation, and I could have gone to any college
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| Most disappointing running moments |
Falling at the 1992 NCAA Championships is probably my worst moment. Like I said, not making the 1992 Olympic team was not one of my worst moments. I dropped the baton at Penn Relays in high school. That was a tough moment. In my freshman year at Georgia Tech, I was given the baton in first place and a guy from New York Tech, Howard Burnett, ran me down and passed me. That was a tough moment. After being passed in that race by Burnett, I had a fear of anchoring. I ran the open 400 meters in 46.8, but I ran the relay in the same 46.8 I was like that until my senior year when I was 45.0 open and on the relay. Most runners tend to run a full second faster on the relay, but I was not like that. I pulled my hamstring very badly in January in a race during my junior year of college. That was a tough moment. Breaking my collarbone was another tough moment. Another tough time wasn’t a moment, but a period of time in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 and the manner in which my ability had declined so sharply. That was tough for me, to see my cohorts like Mark Crear, who is one of my best friends, and Alan Johnson continue to do well and go to the 2000 Olympics after having run well in 1996. Michael Johnson continued to do well. But my ability had gone away after 1996. That was a tough time for me sitting at home and watching the 2000 Olympics while my friends were still competing and doing well
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| Childhood dreams |
This is going to sound crazy, but I wanted to be a truck driver. I had the little Tonka trucks I played with, and I wanted to be a truck driver who drove the big 18-wheel trucks coast-to-coast. Then my seventh grade teacher told me I was too smart to be a truck driver. My parents said the same thing. I was always an ‘A’ student, in honors classes and graduated seventh in my high school and had the highest SAT scores, so I was told I was too smart to be a truck driver even though that’s what I wanted to be. Then I saw a story on Karl Malone and, when he retired from the NBA, he began driving trucks coast-to-coast and it made me feel I wasn’t so silly for having the dream of being a truck driver
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| Embarrassing moments |
I’m very, very clumsy. There is something about the way I walk that the foot that is not on the ground grazes the ground very closely. So, I’m always tripping. My college teammates would constantly tease me about how much I would trip and stumble. It’s ironic that I would become a World Class hurdler who has trouble walking. That was always a running joke
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| Funny memories |
In college I was such a slow walker. I would walk so slowly through campus, but always be on time. I was always on time for practice and always on time for class and yet everybody teased me about how slowly I walked. The same friends walked fast and sometimes ran to class, but they would be late
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| Favorite places to travel |
I love Switzerland and the whole atmosphere of the country. And I always ran fast there and always felt great running there. That is a place I would visit again for the tourism. Cape Town, South Africa was a beautiful city and rich with culture. That’s one of my favorite places. I enjoyed Australia, both the landscape and the culture. It is very different than the United States, but very much the same. Something about the Southern Hemisphere always intrigued me – South Africa, Australia and even Argentina when I went. It was cold. In the United States, Disney World, of course, and that is on everybody’s list. I have friends who haven’t travelled much abroad, and I tell them some of the greatest places are here in the United States. It’s nice to be in London and Paris, but they are just cities. I live in New York and its just a city with a lot of people. Something that is aligned with who I am, and I want to do is to get out to Yosemite and the Grand Canyon
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| Final thoughts |
It was an honor and privilege to spend two-and-a-half hours on the phone with Derrick conversing about his entire running career and so much more. He is an intelligent, articulate and thoughtful man. And what a running career – from best in the USA in his event in high school to Gold Medalist at the World Championships and Olympics – well done, sir!! Following is a final quote from him – ‘I’m impressed with how much information you have. There were some stats you have that I need to keep recorded. You know more about me than I know. I’m amazed by things I have forgotten. I forgot that Glen Terry was on my relay. Thank you for an amazing interview!!’
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