LEFORD Green will get the chance to improve on his seventh place finish in the men’s 400m hurdles at last year’s Olympic Games in London after securing his berth to the IAAF World Championships in Moscow by winning the event at the JAAA/Supreme Ventures National Senior Championships on Friday night at the National Stadium.

After a series of disappointing races, including the Jamaica International Invitational, a race in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and the adidas Grand Prix in New York, his most recent event before coming here, Green ran a season’s best 49.20 seconds, and described the race as “much better executed”.

Green, who trains in Charlotte, North Carolina, with coach Lennox Graham, admitted his sub-par performance in New York had planted doubts in his mind, but he said running out of lane seven allowed him to concentrate on his own race.

“Once I get to the last hurdle first, it is impossible to pass me over the last 40 metres,” he asserted.

“Coming in to the championships, I knew I did all the work, but wasn’t very confident after my last outing,” he said. But a chat with Graham cleared that up.

“Coach told me that was one bad race, to forget about it and we worked hard the last three weeks.”

Having qualified for a global final, the next step is to start challenging for medals he said. “We are still working on technique,” he said, “that has a lot to do with it; I have to get out faster and work on rhythm and approach to the hurdle.”

Green explained that he has the flat speed having run the 200m and 400m and have the endurance over the 800m as well.

One big advantage, he said, is that he is finally injury-free after two and half years, and his body is “getting used to it”.