Canadian hurdler Perdita Felicien has a new coach and new home

Perdita Felicien had already had to cope with losing her longtime coach.

She'd had to move from her home in quaint Champaign, Ill., to Atlanta, putting her house up for sale in one of the darkest U.S. housing markets in history.

But one thing the Canadian hurdler never banked on was having to endure one of the most ruthless winters Atlanta had ever seen, one that closed down the city for days on end and had Felicien scrambling for a way to train in a city without an indoor track.

The locals loved the wintry weather. Felicien? Not so much.

"It snowed probably two or three times, maybe five or six inches. Up in Toronto we would laugh at that," she said in a phone interview from Doha, Qatar. "Everything was shut down, schools, churches, meetings. . . they're not used to snow, they don't know how to function in snow. There were no school buses, nothing. I'm like, dude. . .

"I saw all these snowmen, dirty mangy-looking snowmen, all these people are out there making snowmen, and (the snowmen) looked kind of pathetic," she added with a chuckle. "It was like a novelty having snow, and I was like, 'get over it people."'

The 29-year-old heads into the world indoor championships this weekend in Doha on the heels of a winter of training that was far from ideal, and faces a strong 60-metre hurdles field that includes Priscilla Lopes-Schliep of Whitby, Ont., the fastest in the world this year at 7.82 seconds.

The two hurdlers lead a small but accomplished Canadian team in Doha that includes shot putter Dylan Armstrong of Kamloops, B.C., who broke the Canadian indoor record earlier this season, long jumper Tabia Charles of Pickering, Ont., pole vaulter Kelsie Hendry of Saskatoon, and Nicole Edwards of Winnipeg in the 1,500.

Felicien, who holds the Canadian record of 7.75 she set in winning the 2004 world indoor championships, has twice run 8.01 this season - decent results considering the recent upheaval in her life.

Longtime coach Gary Winckler called her in September to say he was retiring, ending a 10-year relationship that had certainly seen its fair share of both happiness and heartbreak. The two had worked together since Felicien left Pickering, Ont., to attend the University of Illinois in 2000.

"I kind of saw it coming but when he told me on the phone, I started crying," Felicien said. "It was definitely hard because it's 10 years and in sport, you don't stay with a team that long, you see people switching coaches all the time, and having run-ins.

"We have gone through some stuff together, we know each other very well, we really had a good thing going, so for it to end. . . ."

Felicien moved to Atlanta in November to work with renowned American speed coach Loren Seagrave and Rana Reider.

And then the weather turned. With temperatures remaining stubbornly below zero for days on end, Felicien couldn't train outside. When the cold weather did break the odd day here and there, she'd head outside to hurdle. She'd be so sore the next few days she'd have to completely back off her training.

"That has left a taste in my mouth, like, hmm, I don't know about Atlanta winters, but everyone has said, this is the worst it's ever been," Felicien said.

She had been considering a coaching change before Winckler's retirement. The situation, she admitted, had been getting a bit stale.

"I think we were both getting a bit antsy," said Felicien, a former world outdoor gold and silver medallist. "It had been a long road for the two of us."

With the 2012 London Olympics still more than two years away, Felicien said Winckler's timing couldn't have been better.

"I can't say he planned and he knew, but I think that was part of gift to me: I'm not going to retire in 2009, when she's coming back from 19 months off (from injury), that would be heartless, plus there's a world championship (last year in Berlin)."

Next year would have been a tough adjustment just out a year out from London.

"So this is the best year to do it and that's kind of like, kudos to him and thanks to him, because if he was going to let me go, it would have to be 2010," she said.

Felicien hopes to erase her Olympic heartbreak in London - she crashed in the final in 2004 in Athens and missed the 2008 Beijing Games with a foot injury.

In setting out her London plan, 2010 is a season of transition, "with 2011 being great and 2012 being spectacular."

"I'm having to rework and retool and rewire a lot of things that kind of change your continuity, and that's like anything in life, your natural rhythm of things are changed," Felicien said.

"I want to have a good race this weekend, I want to be on the podium, but also know that I'm working through a really big transition, changing from 10 years that was good into something that's new for me. I know that my results aren't necessarily indicative of the progress, because it's a big change for anybody."

The biggest change on the track, she said, is a switch in focus from the mechanics of hurdling - Winckler's specialty - to one of pure sprinting speed. Seagrave, who's coached more than 50 athletes to international medals including Canadian Olympic champion Donovan Bailey, wants to see Felicien get faster, especially out of the starting blocks which has always been her weakness.

Felicien and Lopes-Schliep race the hurdles heats Friday. The final is Saturday.