400 Hurdles

Last Thursday, McMaster secured a significant victory in Slovakia, winning the 400m hurdles in a season's best time of 47.26 seconds. At the P-T-S Meeting, the British Virgin Islands star raced to victory ahead of David Kendziera the USA, who clocked in at 48.95 seconds with Dany Brandt of Switzerland taking third place with a season-best time of 49.25 seconds.

McMaster, a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, joined Evans’ group at the end of last season after spending the previous five years with Jamaican coach Lennox Graham, who is also the Assistant Coach at Clemson University.

Under Graham’s guidance, McMaster won two Commonwealth Games titles and was fourth at the Toyko Olympics in a lifetime best 47.08, a time that would have won the gold medal at every other Olympic Games except for 1992 when Kevin Young won in a then world record of 46.78 and in Tokyo where Karsten Warholm dropped a jaw-dropping 45.94 to win gold.

Two years on, Coach Evans believes the 26-year-old McMaster is now primed to achieve a new lifetime best and a place on the podium of a global championship.

Prior to McMaster’s season-best run in Slovakia, the BVI-born hurdler has been running 48s all season so his performance in Slovakia was somewhat surprising. Regarding McMaster's readiness and recent improvement, Coach Evans stated, "I do believe that he probably should have run 47 a little earlier. But the thing is sometimes when you get a kid from a new coach he has to get used to the program and then you do things a little differently."

In Evans’ training group McMaster trains with the likes of Steven Gardiner, an Olympic and World Champion, Matthew Hudson-Smith, a World Championship bronze medallist as well as Michael Cherry, a 400m standout. Working with them has helped McMaster get settled and improve. He just now needs to focus on the task at hand.

"Kyron studies hard, studies very, very hard and I told him, sometimes you're doing too much studying. You're trying to do my job, the agent's job. I just need you to run," the veteran coach said.

Speaking about the training plan to get McMaster to this stage before the World Championships, Coach Evans explained, "We worked on what we had to work on the track and when we step out on the track, just run... know that I got to run 400 metres but I got 10 sticks. That's one of the 10 items that's going to interrupt me and that's how we look at it now."

In Budapest, McMaster will face Warholm, American champion Rai Benjamin and the world champion, Alison dos Santos, all of whom have run 46 seconds for the 400m hurdles. For McMaster to get onto the podium, he has to be capable to dipping below 47 seconds.

Evans believes he is ready to do just that.

“[I] already told him to get ready to get a new tattoo (of his new personal best). I have a few goals when I'm coaching; two goals, we are going to win a medal and when we step on that track at the end of the season, we going to know we ran our PB."

Regarding McMaster's competitors, Coach Evans noted, "You got the big three; you got Santos back, you got Warholm, and you got Rai Benjamin, somebody's going to choke, somebody's going to make a mistake.

“Somebody's going to take a step back. One of them hurdlers is going to step back and do a 47. You got to be ready to say, ‘Okay, I need to make sure I step forward. It's like I told Matthew Hudson Smith last year when Stevie (Gardiner) stepped out the picture. Matthew Hudson, this is your time to go get your medal.”

Coach Evans further expressed his confidence in McMaster's potential to succeed, saying, "I think we got a good game plan that we're going come up with when we get there. Kyron, it's your time to step in the picture... You got to stay in front of them... Your foot on the gas. You got to be on the gas now."

McMaster races next at the Eddie Murphy Classic in Memphis, Tennessee on August 4. It will be his final race before departing for his medal hunt in Budapest.

“My objective is for him to run in Memphis where it'll be a great. It'll be a great field. You know CJ Allen that ran 47.8 and two other guys. A lot of people are going to use that Memphis race. For our people, that's their last race and then they're going across [to Budapest],” Evans concluded.