Jorge Torres packs a new attitude
When Jorge Torres arrives in Edinburgh for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, he will unpack his spikes, singlet, warm-ups, and maybe even a hat and gloves. But one crucial item won’t be found in the luggage: his renewed confidence.
“Training has been going great,” said Torres, coming off a win on March 15 at the USA 8K Championships. “With my coach, I’m at a new level, and he’s given me the confidence I was lacking. I feel like I’ve found the right steps. He works us hard, but it feels easy.”
Torres’s new coach is Steve Jones, a 1984 Olympian at 10,000 meters, former marathon world record-holder and nine-time Welsh cross-country champion who once said: “If I’m still standing at the end of the race, hit me with a board and knock me down, because that means I didn't run hard enough.”
“He’s the kind of guy who’s been to the top of the world and knows what it takes,” says Torres. “We all believe in him because he’s been there. We know he doesn’t have an agenda, unless it’s for all of us to do our best.”
Quick to call Torres’s strength and success a tribute to former coach Brad Hudson, Jones does acknowledge: “If I have had any influence on his, I think it is his confidence. I don’t baby him, or the others. I turn a deaf ear to complaints of soreness or tiredness. But I always try to talk positively to them, and I think my positive attitude rubs off.”
Jones’s Tempo Sports training group also includes Alan Culpepper, Fernando Cabada, steeplechaser Andy Smith and Torres’s twin brother, Edwardo. At the USA Cross Country Championships earlier this year, Edwardo finished ninth to Jorge’s second, so both made the team for Sunday’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships. It will be Edwardo’s second appearance and Jorge’s fourth, and the first time the brothers have competed together on a national team.
For Jorge Torres, 2008 has been a new beginning in other ways, as well. Coming off a USA 10,000-meter track title in 2006 – in his first race ever at the distance – Torres looked to be among the favorites to make the 2007 World Championships squad or even the Olympic marathon team. But anemia caused him to struggle.
“Last year in my workouts, it was impossible to get out the door,” he says. “I’d get out, but every day was a struggle. I had no energy, and I was drained even before racing season started.” After a fourth in the Pan American Games 10,000m in mid-July, Torres took a month off, then started anew in August with Jones and the new training group.
In a telephone interview last week, his reborn enthusiasm was quickly apparent. “I feel like I’ve found the right steps to follow,” he said. “It’s easy to get out the door when you have this group, and a guy like Jonesy. I’m looking forward to what I can do at World Cross. I definitely want to run in the top 10 and put myself in contention.”
“He’s working hard,” says Jones in verification. “He deserves to be confident.”
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