A Tale Of Two Comebacking Hurdlers

IF, A YEAR AGO, you were trying to forecast the future of the 100H in the United States, there are two names you might have easily left out.

A year ago, Alaysha Johnson had a 1-race season, a single flat 100 where she clocked 12.05. The previous year, the former Oregon/Texas Tech star had clocked only 13.44w over hurdles in her sole race. As she puts it, “People would say, ‘Are you still training? I remember you used to be so amazing.’”

A year ago, Tia Jones struggled through just 4 races, grimacing in pain as she tried to rehab what could easily have been a career-ending Achilles rupture. The former Georgia prep sensation (Walton, Marietta) hit times of 13.08/12.95w and says, “Every step of the way it was so painful. I actually had a doctor tell me, ‘You might not want to run again,’ just trying to scare me out of it.”

The outlook for the two hurdlers had at one point been bright. In ’17 Johnson ran a PR of 12.69 and won the Pac-12 title, then placed 4th in the NCAA for Oregon. She ranked No. 9 in the nation.

A year earlier, Jones had run her best of 12.84 as a high school frosh. She captured the World Junior bronze that year and the gold two years later, earning a rare U.S. Ranking as a prep.

But both experienced the depths of despair as they struggled with deciding whether or not to keep trying to hurdle. Amazingly, both emerged in ’22 as major contenders on the world stage, with each of them joining the all-time U.S. Top 10 list (see box) and positioning themselves well to earn their first ever World Rankings.