BUDAPEST, Hungary – Maurice Broadbell thinks his son Rasheed will bounce back from Sunday’s mishap in the first round of the 110m hurdles at the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Center in Budapest, Hungary.

The younger Broadbell, the world leader coming into the championships with his personal best 12.94 seconds, hit a barrier in his first-round race and failed to complete the event in one of the biggest disappointments of the championships so far.

Minutes after the race, the elder Broadbell was spotted consoling his wife Dahlia, who appeared inconsolable.

Twenty four hours after the incident, Maurice, himself an Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association Boys Champs finalists in the 110m hurdles and a medallist in the high jump in 1992, also for St Jago High, said while it was “hard to swallow”, life goes on.

“We have to all be strong, and I’ve taught him strength while he was growing up and all of that,” Maurice told the Jamaica Observer. “So, I mean, we have to look forward, and what I have to do now is just check in with him more often, you know, I mean, sometimes there are other things than what we think is going on, and you know, we need to look into things more deeply and then try to see how we can move forward from this.”

Rasheed had walked through the media mixed zone after he fell over the hurdle with a look of disappointment on his face, but his father said he was “doing much better”.

“He has realised that this is just one of the stepping stones, because as you all know, great champions have great failures. So you know, you don’t make [them] defeat you. You have to stand tall, get up, stand tall, and move on, because life is just a journey.”

At a press conference held on Thursday, Rasheed had said he and his father had a conversation about his next move and he had asked his father to allow him a year to see if he would be able to develop as a hurdler, with a view to going professional.

Maurice said his son had told him that he really wanted to go fully into track and field. “I said, ‘You know what, seeing that you are doing so well and you seem like you are very dedicated to what you want,’ I gave him the go ahead,” said the elder Broadbell.

Maurice said Rasheed went to the University of Technology, “and by that time we saw the growth in his development”.

“[Coach] Stephen Francis did a great job and from then I saw that [he could be very good at it], and I said, ‘Young man, just take it on and do your best.’ “

Himself a former athlete, Maurice played a pivotal part in the early development of his son.

“I also taught him the first time he ever went over a hurdle, I used to coach him, of course, when he was much younger. All the time he was in high school, I was basically an assistant coach,” he said, adding that coaches Rhansome Edwards, Maurice Wignal, and Edridge Darling all played a part as well,” Maurice ended.