Let's Rap

http://www.charlotte.com/sports/story/680969.html

Mother of all Olympic dreams
Hurdler Lashinda Demus is raising twins while training for shot at U.S. team



COLUMBIA --Lashinda Demus was used to jumping hurdles – 10 of them in every race.

But this was ridiculous.

She had thought having her own kids would be simple. She had always been drawn to children. She babysat frequently as a teen.

“I loved being around kids,” Demus said. “I mean, what could be so hard about that? But when I had them I realized: It's hard.”

Making this a bigger hurdle was the fact that Demus had her twin boys at an awkward time in her career – the year before the Olympics. By 2007, the 25-year-old Columbia resident had turned into a rising track star.

When she moved from California to Columbia to run track for South Carolina in 2001, Demus was just a fine prospect. But that had changed. She had gotten so good in college that she turned pro early. In 2006, she was ranked the No.1 women's 400-meter hurdler in the world.

And then she got pregnant and decided to take a year off to have the babies.

Now Demus is trying to regain that No.1 ranking. And, if she's going to make a good living in her sport, she needs to get it back. Few outside the track world pay much attention to the sport except during the Olympics. To cement her status and dramatically increase her earning potential, Demus really needs to win a medal – preferably a gold – in August.

Like many women do after giving birth, Demus has worked for the past year trying to get her body back to its pre-pregnancy days. The difference is that Demus is also working frantically toward what she hopes is a golden summer.

“She wants to be the best hurdler who has ever lived,” said her coach, Sylvaneus Hepburn, a former Olympic sprinter himself for The Bahamas. “She wants to break the American and then the world record in her event. And she's got the talent to do all of that.”

First, though, Demus must qualify for the U.S. Olympic team when track and field's Olympic trials begin Friday in Eugene, Ore. The women's 400-meter hurdles final is a week from today, with the top three finishers earning a berth in Beijing.

I caught up with Demus at 7:45 one morning in Columbia, where she trains with a small group of other hurdlers and sprinters at a modest public park near Columbia's downtown airport.

It was the start of a typical day. Demus' husband, Jamel Mayrant, was taking care of the twins in the morning. Then, after her practice, Demus would go home to take care of them in the afternoon and evening while Mayrant worked at his job as a recreational supervisor at a juvenile prison. They would eventually have a quick dinner together before getting the twins to bed and falling to sleep exhausted.

“We don't do much of anything other than care for them and love them,” Demus said. “We're doing good if we get to a movie.”

Demus is often asked why she hasn't hired a nanny, given her rigorous training schedule and Mayrant's job. Cost is the biggest issue, they said. They have now sent Duaine and Dontay Demus to Lashinda's parents in California for this period immediately before and after the Olympic trials.

It's a balancing act, as any parent knows. Demus misses mothering the twins when they're gone, but she also had a big training breakthrough the last time they stayed with her parents.

Demus and Mayrant have been a couple for five years, although they weren't married when she got pregnant. “I was depressed for awhile because it (the pregnancy) happened when it happened,” Demus said. “And then I just got over it. People go through far worse things. And how do you consider kids something bad?”

Demus, who is 5-foot-7, gained 50 pounds during the pregnancy, going from 130 to 180. She gave birth in June 2007. Three weeks later, her mom (a former U.S. national team member as a quarter-miler) got her to start walking. A week after that, her mom told her to start jogging again.

“It's all my mom's fault,” Demus said, smiling.

“I think she's all the way back,” said Yolanda Demus, Lashinda's mother and her former coach when Lashinda was a youth track star. “I think she's going to be better.”

In late 2007, several months after the twins were born, Demus and Mayrant married. “We basically wanted to get right with God,” Mayrant said. “It made us stronger as a family.”

The twins have proven to be strong-willed, healthy and active. They walked at 10 months and now generally rule the house except at naptime.

“They're pretty stubborn,” Demus said. “Then again, my parents say I was stubborn when I was little.”

If Demus makes the Olympic team, it won't be the first time. Her 2004 experience was mixed.

She was on world-record pace at the U.S. Olympic trials before hitting the ninth hurdle, stumbling and suddenly finding herself in fourth place. She sprinted back to third, though, to barely make the squad. Then, in the Olympics in Greece, she had a bad race in her semifinal heat and missed qualifying for the final.

“I slowed down at the line because I thought I was eliminated anyway,” Demus said. “It was a big mistake.”

Demus promises she won't make it again. I asked her what she felt the best race of her career has been. She glanced at the twins, then looked up.

“The best race of my life,” she said, “hasn't come yet.”