Matt Hughes home to win Pan Am Games

The Wednesday before his Pan Am Games 3,000m steeplechase race, Matt Hughes spent his morning running, watching the Tour de France and drinking coffee, a fairly laid-back approach for someone hoping to win a major international championship in six days. He’s at home for the week, away from his training base and missing valuable time at altitude, but the 25-year-old Oshawa, Ont.,-native believes the pros outweigh the cons, and he’s confident the decision to compete at home will pay off.

“The main pro is I have a really good opportunity to win the race, and I feel confident in saying that and putting that out there,” says Hughes about the upcoming race. “I think anything other than a win, I would be disappointed with. And gaining experience, being at the lead and winning these kind of major championships and having my friends and family share that experience with me is just something I wouldn’t want to miss out on. If I sat out the Pan Am Games and then saw I had a really good opportunity of winning and felt I missed that I think I would be kind of disappointed.”

There are few opportunities for athletes to compete in international championships at home, so Hughes has taken the chance of coming home for the Games before world championships, something he admits is his main goal this summer.

Hughes has been dominant in his event since high school, racing for Canada at the Pan American junior championships in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2007. He and his coach didn’t think he was in shape to make the team for the 1,500m, two other athletes having run faster, so they decided to try steeplechase. The decision paid off: he made the team and went on to compete for the University of Louisville in the event, where he twice won at the NCAA championships.

But the year following his graduation, Hughes missed the 2012 Olympic Games, an event he had hoped to compete in. In 2013 he broke the Canadian record, running 8:11.64 to come sixth at world championships. He credits much of his comeback to Nate Brannen, one of Canada’s best 1,500m runners, and now a training partner to Hughes.

“I had never really quite understood what it took to be a post-collegiate, professional runner, and I learned it takes a lot of dedication and sacrifice and I learned first-hand by spending a lot of time with [Nate Brannen] in 2013,” says Hughes. “I think there was a direct correlation between how I approached training in 2012 and missing the Olympics and training in 2013 and having a lot of success. I owe a lot of that to Nate for taking me under his wing and showing me what it took to get 100 per cent out of yourself.”

In the next few days, Hughes will do easier workouts to prepare for his Tuesday night race. He knows that, while confident, he still has to be prepared to compete; he can be beaten. He’ll schedule the workouts to be about the same time as his 7:10 p.m. gun time on race day, getting his body ready. The Thursday after he’ll fly back to Flagstaff, Ariz., for an altitude camp.

For fans at the stadium that night — and most of the track and field tickets for finals are sold out – Hughes is ready to put on a show alongside teammate Alex Genest.

“I think Canada has a very good opportunity at having two guys on the podium. You look at me an Alex and I feel like we’re both kind of poised and ready to have a good event at Pan Ams and we could potentially have two guys go one-two or two-three or whatever it is.”