By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net    

KEN Mullings, former student-athlete of the University of The Bahamas (UB), has experienced a lot of monumental firsts over the course of the last few weeks in the athletics world. 

Mullings qualified for his first Olympic Games via the World Athletics Rankings System and this feat made him the first UB student-athlete to become an Olympian and the first Bahamian multi-event athlete to be named to an Olympic squad.

His latest accomplishments did not come without its fair share of challenges along the journey to Paris, France, but he is grateful for those that assisted in helping him to become the athlete that he is today.

“It feels pretty good coming a long way from training in The Bahamas and trying to find my next practice session because there was a lot of equipment that I did not have a couple years ago while training. This is coming from nothing basically. Believe it or not, if UB didn’t take the chance on changing me from a hurdler to a decathlon athlete, then I probably would not have been an Olympian today. UB played a big part in me doing the decathlon but the adjustments my coaches made this year and the Powerade sponsorship made it possible for me to qualify for the Olympics.

“Going into UB I was a high jump/hurdler but coach Ednal Rolle transferred me to the heptathlon/decathlon and UB had to buy the equipment to make sure that I could pursue this dream immediately and have everything I needed in place,” he said.

Since then, the 27-year-old has soared to new heights in the multi-events. He has emerged as the former national record holder in the men’s outdoor decathlon event and the current record holder for the men’s indoor heptathlon in 2022 and 2024 respectively. He has undoubtedly etched his name into the history books at UB by becoming the first student-athlete from the institution to be named to the Bahamian Olympic team.

The decorated multi-athlete had nothing but high praise for the UB Athletics programme and said thriving at home boils down to the mindset of the student-athlete.

“It shows that you can do it at home. I have been preaching this year after year. It is the mindset of that athlete but if an athlete does not put his/her full foot forward, they would not get anything in return. You have to go into the programme believing in it for you to actually see the benefits,” he said.

Although a number of athletes tend to prefer to study and compete abroad, Mullings had this response when asked if he expects more Bahamian athletes to take the UB route for their collegiate careers.

“They should because it is much more affordable to go to UB and pursue athletics. It is not that expensive for UB athletes and we go to these division one meets to compete against athletes in division one schools so you would not miss out on anything. Even if you go to a D1 school, if you do not put your best foot forward you will not get anything in return,” he said.

The Paris Olympic Games are scheduled to start next week Friday, June 26 and run until August 11. 

The decathlon portion of the event begins on August 2 and ends on August 3. 

Mullings gave  a brief insight on how the Olympics preparation is going up to this point. 

“My preparation has not really changed but we tweaked it a bit to try and peak for the Olympics. We are going from more reps to less reps to try and get faster. So far, I am feeling much stronger and faster. I just gotta execute out there to get some big points,” he said.

The decathlete was ranked 21st overall on the World Athletics Rankings. World Athletics allotted 24 spots for the decathlon event. 

Out of the 10 events the versatile athlete is scheduled to tackle, he wants to improve in the 1,500 metres the most ahead of his commute to Paris, France.

“I always go into the last event in the top five and the dreadful 1,500m hurts me so much. We are spending a lot of time on the 1,500m without trying to sacrifice with my other events so we will see at the Olympics how much of this is gonna pay off,” he said.

The Bahamian Olympics team was named last night by the Bahamas Olympic Committee (BOC) at the Andre Rodgers National Baseball Stadium.