Double Merritt

Published by SPIKES on December 18, 2014

After two difficult years, Olympic 110m hurdles champion and world record holder Aries Merritt is back. The US athlete talks injury frustration, giving up ice cream and why he is confident of success in 2015.

Call it superstition, but Aries Merritt had a dream last night, he tells SPIKES.

“I rarely dream about track, but last night I dreamt about becoming a repeat Olympic champion in Rio,” he says. “I was talking to my mom saying, ‘I’m in the history books, I have repeated’. Then I woke up and I realised it was a dream.”

Merritt has had to endure luck more akin to a nightmare over the last couple of seasons, so perhaps there is a sprinkling of irony to the Texas-based hurdler’s dream (comparisons to Bobby Ewing can stop there).

After enjoying his “perfect year” in 2012 ­– winning the Olympic title, obliterating the 110m world record by 0.07 seconds and dipping under 13 seconds a record-breaking eight times – the 2013 and 2014 campaigns have been considerably less memorable.