Q&A: Adrian Durant

Cornell men's track & field head coach Adrian Durant has had a busy #Rio2016. Not only is he serving as the head coach of the US Virgin Islands, for which he himself competed as an athlete, he is also the coach for former Big Red Bruno Hortelano-Roig (Spain, 200m), and on top of those he will be checking out the events for other Cornell alums Muhammad Halim (US Virgin Islands, triple jump) and Stephen Mozia (Nigeria, shot put) as well as rising senior Rudy Winkler (USA, weight throw). He talked to #IviesinRio about his work trip to Rio de Janeiro.

Talk about the accomplishment of Rudy Winkler, winning the national championship at the Olympic Trials and earning a berth to Rio. Rudy is a special kid. Everyone who meets him likes him. He’s very committed to what he’s doing, and he’s good. Throwing the hammer is a passion for him, so he likes taking a lot of throws, getting a feel for it, working very hard. He’s always performed well in big stages, so with him, anything is possible. I’ll absolutely watch him – there’s no way I’m going to miss a throw. A lot of the US Virgin Island athletes have their own coaches, so aside from making sure everyone has what they need to be successful, making sure everything is going right administratively, I won’t have to spend much time working with individuals so I will be able to catch Rudy throw. This year’s games also features recent Big Red Graduates Muhammad Halim, Stephen Mozia and Bruno Hortelano-Roig. Talk about what that means for Cornell and its track & field program. This is amazing for us. It’s been an amazing year in general. To have this much representation in the biggest competition in the world is what you hope for as a coach and a program. For most athletes, the Olympics is their dream. Bruno still trains in Ithaca, and I still train him, and he has worked so hard to achieve his dream of making it to the Olympics. Anytime you can in some way facilitate that for someone else, it’s an amazing feeling for yourself and an amazing accomplishment for them. We couldn’t be more proud of them. Talk about this past year for you, your first year as Cornell Track & Field coach, culminationg not only with the Ivy Heps outdoor title but also you and Rudy going to the Olympics. It’s been a great year for the team. We hadn’t won Ivy Heps in 2015, and it was a tough loss last year and a tough loss at indoor Ivy Heps this year, so we went back to the drawing board and evaluated what happened at indoor and how we could turn it around at outdoor. It was one of those things where you plan and prepare and everybody was clicking on all cylinders. It worked out perfectly for us and we’re thankful for that. We just wanted to win, so we didn’t expect to score over 200 points. That wasn’t the goal but we were excited by the outcome. When you have that kind of performance and the guys on the team understand how big a deal that is, then going on to regionals and nationals, our guys were on fire at that point. As a coach, when you’re planning the year, setting goals, this year surpassed all of those goals and it was great to be a part of it.