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In April of this year, during a three-week warm-weather camp in Clermont, Florida, Israel Olatunde got to witness some of the sprint training sessions being performed by Noah Lyles. Up close, but not quite in person.
Last summer in Budapest, Lyles became a three-time World Champion, winning the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4×100 metres relay for the US, and with that taking over the title as the fastest man on earth.
It was during the trip to Clermont when Olatunde’s coach Daniel Kilgallon at Tallaght AC first made a connection with Lance Brauman, who has coached Lyles since 2016, when the Florida-born sprinter first signed a professional contract with Adidas shortly after finishing high school in Virginia.
Kilgallon was invited to sit in on some of Brauman’s coaching sessions and that connection has resulted in Olatunde, Ireland’s fastest man, joining up with the training group of Lyles, the newly crowned Olympic 100 metres champion.
Brauman’s training group are partnered with Adidas, which also sponsors Olatunde, and the 22-year-old Dublin sprinter will make the move to the US next month for an initial one-year period, following renewed discussions between Brauman and Kilgallon and Adidas representatives in recent weeks.
Olatunde broke his own Irish 100 metres record last Sunday, clocking 10.12 seconds to win at the Newham Open meeting in London, with that taking a full 0.05 off his previous mark set two years ago. One of the first people to send Kilgallon a congratulatory text message was Brauman.
Based at the National Training Centre in Clermont, 35km west of Orlando, Brauman’s training group was started up in 2007, and is known as the PURE (Perfect Understanding of Running Efficiency) sprint group , with 2007 World 100 metres and 200 metres champion Tyson Gay, also from the US, among his first global successes.
Earlier this month, the 27-year-old Lyles became the first US Olympic 100 metres champion in 20 years, coming from last to first to win in a new personal best of 9.784 seconds. Lyles later won bronze in the 200 metres behind Letsile Tebogo from Botswana, after which he revealed he had tested positive for Covid-19 since his 100 metres success.
Kilgallon has successfully guided Olatunde since he first emerged from the schoolboy ranks in 2019. Olatunde, a native of Dundalk, initially came up through Dún Dealgan AC where he was first coached by Gerry McArdle.
Olatunde’s previous Irish record of 10.17 seconds was set when finishing sixth in the 2022 European Championships final in Munich, which eclipsed Paul Hession’s mark of 10.18, which had stood since 2007.
After a difficult 2023, Olatunde gradually regained his best form again this summer, coming from behind to win the national title in June in 10.27, his fourth successive senior 100 metres title, also winning three successive 60 metres indoor titles.
[ Israel Olatunde eyeing magical 10-second barrier as he sets new Irish 100m recordOpens in new window ]
Brauman’s training group formerly included Shaunae Miller-Uibo from the Bahamas, the Olympic 400 metres champion in 2016 and 2020, with world 400 metres record holder Wayde van Niekerk from South Africa also joining the group earlier this year. It also includes Jamaican sprinter Junelle Bromfield, who is Lyles’s girlfriend, and another top US sprinter, Kendal Williams.
Olatunde is not the first Irish sprinter to make the move into Brauman’s training group, with six-time Paralympics gold medal winner Jason Smyth also spending extended periods of time there from 2009.
David Gillick also moved to Brauman’s group in October 2010, having previously moved to Loughborough in England in 2006 to become a full-time athlete. However, that move lasted less than a year when Gillick ended his 2011 season early due to a series of calf muscle injuries.
“Moving to America was a massive learning curve and it was an opportunity that I am glad that I pursued,” Gillick said at the time.
Brauman has had something of a controversial past. In early 2007, he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being found guilty of five counts related to paying athletes for work not performed when he was the track coach at Barton County Community College.
After serving nine months in a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, he was released and began coaching his former protege Gay once again.
On the eve of the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Gay tested positive for a banned substance. He was banned for a year and stripped of his Olympic relay silver medal from London 2012. Another of Brauman’s former athletes, the Jamaican 100 metres sprinter Steve Mullings, was previously given a lifetime ban for a second positive drugs test in 2011.
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