When Lawrence Clarke was young he met the Dalai Lama, who blessed him 100 times and hugged him for an hour, and later went on to study Zen Buddhism. Now, after an injury-ravaged three years since finishing fourth in the 110m hurdles at London 2012, the 24-year-old is convinced that his “incredible focus” can help him win gold at the European indoor championships in Prague on Friday.
Clarke, who went to Eton and is a distant relative of the former US president Theodore Roosevelt, is the third fastest European in the 60m hurdles this year. While the Frenchmen Dimitri Bascou and Pascal Martinot-Lagarde are favourites, Clarke believes their bitter rivalry could work in his favour.
“Pascal’s lost quite a few major races he should have won, notably the world indoors last year,” he says. “And Bascou was coming here thinking ‘this is an easy gold medal’, because he’s run 7.48, which is phenomenally quick, but then Pascal’s decided to turn up and I know that he and Dimitri don’t have the best relationship as they were training together and have now split up.
“I’m hoping the French will put so much pressure on each other that I can slip in on the outside. But this new French kid Wilhem Belocian has run 7.53 which is very quick – and he’s still only 18. It’s all to play for.”
Few would begrudge Clarke a medal after his injuries, which have included a broken wrist and two hamstring tears in 2013 and a hamstring twinge that forced him to pull out minutes before the final of the European championships in Zurich last year.
“You know in a dream when you’re running and you run slowly, that’s what all my races had been like for the last two years,” he says. “It’s been really frustrating I’ve not been able to push on. It’s been really hard to motivate myself but now I’m there.”
Clarke is obsessed with climbing mountains, and in a sense each injury has forced him to drop back to the base and start again. Yet he has never lost heart – in part because a tragic accident in the Alps, when he was 15, has given him a healthy perspective.
“I was climbing with a guide up the back side of the Grand Combin, near Verbier in Switzerland,” he explains. “There was a group of six Germans, and one in the middle slipped off the cliff. Because I was with the only guide, he had to organise the mountain rescue because there were 70mph winds and the helicopters couldn’t get in. I was taken down to this group of Germans in their 30s crying their eyes out. Age 15, I’m sitting there going: ‘My god’. The guide came back with an ice axe and I was wondering if this was a film or reality. When we were back at the hut, there was just a hand hanging off the stretcher. So I never went back.
“It makes you realise, don’t make mistakes. It’s so important to put in the right preparation. This guy didn’t have crampons on. It’s like turning up to the track without spikes. It’s a no-brainer. What it put into perspective is the fragility of what you do. And certainly when it comes to the track, when you’re on the edge physically but in a different way, you value what you’re trying to do and you’re properly focused.”
Clarke says he still dreams of climbing Mount Everest, or “maybe K2”, and wants to visit Tibet too. But for now he is hoping that his unusual interests will help spark his athletics career again.
“The combination of mountaineering experience, Buddhism and this sport has made me incredibly focused,” adds Clarke. “Being in that call room, you have to have the ultimate focus. You have to be in a state of Zen and be in a meditative place. And if you let anything in, it’s game over.”
