London, England — Having won everything at the Youth and Junior levels, Jaheel Hyde is ready to make his mark at the senior level in the 400m hurdles and after getting his feet wet at last year’s Rio Olympics, he believes the experience was invaluable.

“I completed all my goals. I won the World Juniors and I made the Olympics team. So those were my two goals for last year and I did them,” Hyde told the Jamaica Observer just moments after completing his drills at the Stratford Park training facility.

That learning process that Hyde stressed on was making his first senior team and after three gruelling rounds in the 400m hurdles, he was fifth in his semi-final in 49.17 seconds. At the time it was just outside his personal best of 49.03 econds.

“Last year was a learning process, so I had to carry it over to this year,” he noted, and that he did.

The former Wolmer’s Boys’ School star has since lowered that time to 48.52 seconds and became Jamaica’s senior national champion, winning in 48.53 seconds, which was just outside his personal best. But what this time has shown is that Hyde is in that 48 seconds zone and he likes what is happening in training.

“Training has been going well; I can’t complain because I have seen some improvement since trials. It’s just to take each round one step at a time in order to get myself into the final,” he said.

Hyde, a talented footballer who scored three goals for Jamaica against Bermuda at the Under-17 level in 2012, is aiming to lower his personal best once more as he matches strides with the world’s top guns. That’s what he would be satisfied with.

“A personal best, and I know that to do something good here I will have to run a personal best,” he added.

Hyde will be in action today starting at 5:05 am, and along with Kemar Mowatt and Ricardo Cunningham, the trio will be hoping to upstage the likes of veteran American Kerron Clements, world leader Kyron McMaster of the British Virgin Islands, plus the emerging Karsten Warholm of Norway.

Hyde, who had an epic battle with the overseas-based NCAA star Mowatt at the Jamaican championship, where he won by a whisker clocking the same time of 48.53 seconds, believes that friendly rivalry will serve Jamaica well.

“Mowatt and I just got close because he goes to school away (overseas), so we just meeting up. We play games together and there is no bad vibes; it’s just friendship,” noted Hyde.

And with that in mind, he is asking the country to be patient and rally behind them as they look to turn Jamaica into a 400m hurdles force.

“Just to keep supporting us, because we trying to build the 400 hurdles in Jamaica, so that’s our quest. Mowatt, Cunningham and myself, we trying to make the event one to watch for the Jamaicans and the rest of the world.”

— Howard Walker