QUEENS — Gold medal winner Dalilah Muhammad's innate talent was clear to those who knew her starting when she was only 4 years old.
Long before Muhammad became the first American woman ever to win the 400m hurdles at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, “she was always full of energy,” according to George Taylor, 52, a track and field coach who first noticed her talents as a family friend and neighbor in Rochdale Village.
“She was jumping and flipping all over the place at a young age,” added Taylor, the founder of the Jamaica-based NOVAS Track Club.
When she was 7, he told her parents that it was “time for her to join my track team,” he said.
On Thursday, he and about 200 others gathered for a viewing party at the Rochdale Village Community Center to watch her race.
“It was great," he said. "They had a big cheering section, which is where I was, and we got to view it on a big screen, everyone at the same time."
The club, which Taylor started in 1989, currently works with about 80 youths ages 6 to 18, said Taylor, adding that at some point he also trained Lalonde Gordon, who won the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
10-year-old Dalilah Muhammad in front of her coach George Taylor at Cross Country Nationals in South Carolina. Photo: Courtesy of George Taylor
Taylor said that as a teen, Muhammad was interested in pursuing various track and field events, including the hurdles, sprints, long jump and high jump.
"She always wanted to learn everything," he said. "She was very competitive and anything she did she wanted to be the best at."
Initially, he said, she actually wasn’t among the club's best hurdlers.
When she was in the third grade she also suffered a bad fall and stopped hurdling for about two years, he said. Muhammad's mother, fearing she would get injured, also didn’t want her to pursue it, he said.
But Taylor said he would not let her quit the hurdles. “She was very flexible and naturally gifted,” he said.
Muhammad, 26, who finished the race on Thursday with a time of 55:33, trained with the NOVAS Track Club in Baisley and Roy Wilkins parks is South Jamaica for about 9 years.
She later went to Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside where she became a track and field star.
At that time, Taylor said, she became his training partner.
In 2007, she won her first international competition when she took the 400m hurdles gold medal during the 2007 World Youth Championships in Athletics in the Czech Republic, Taylor said.
"I’m sure that was a turning point," he said. "She could see that there was no limit to what she was able to do after that."
In 2008, she moved to California where she went to study business at the University of Southern California on a sports scholarship.
Taylor, who said Muhammad is “like an adopted daughter" to him, now hopes her success will inspire other kids in the neighborhood to pursue track and field.
Her gold medal, he said, proves that “the possibility is there.”
12-year-old Dalilah Muhammad (in the center). Photo: Courtesy of George Taylor
