ARIES MERRITT BIO
Born: July 24, 1985
Ht.: 6-foot-1
Wt.: 158 pounds
High School: Wheeler, where he was the 2003 state Class AAAAA champion in the 110-meter hurdles, unbeaten in the event during his senior year.
College: Tennessee. He was the 2006 NCAA champion in the 110-meter hurdles and broke the SEC record during a conference championship meet (held by Terrence Trammell), also eclipsing 24-year school record set by Willie Gault. Only Renaldo Nehemiah has run faster at the collegiate level. A world junior champion in 2005.
As a pro: Olympic gold medalist 2012, ran 12.80 weeks later to break Dayron Robles four-year-old world record (12.87). 2011 U.S. Track and Field Outdoor Championship runner-up.
Big sis didn’t know what to make of little bro when he came along, taking up everyone’s time and attention.
“I was expecting to be the only child,” said LaToya Hubbard, who was 7 when brother Aries Merritt came along and spoiled her well-laid plans almost 31 years ago.
“I didn’t like my brother growing up. You know, you’re selfish when you’re young. You’re used to being by yourself for seven years, and all of a sudden you have this little baby coming.”
Merritt seconded the emotion. “I hated her for a while,” he said. “I was like: ‘I don’t like my sister, she’s mean.’ In the long run, it was probably good for me. Toughened me up.”
Time did its good work in this case, and with maturity LaToya gained clarity. “As I got older,” she said, “I saw that I had a role and that role was to be the protector, the big sister.”
No, it was not exactly a straight road that led to an Arizona hospital Sept. 1, with big sis and little bro on gurneys, one prepping to give a kidney, the other to receive.
To be the protector now meant giving up a piece of herself, a decision that had required barely a moment’s thought. Brother and sister had cousins by the score, a family tree loaded with potential donors. “Don’t worry,” their mother, Linda Hubbard, had told Aries after the diagnosis of the genetic disease that most assuredly would mean a transplant. “This will make you stronger. You’re going to get through this. And, you know, we’ve got plenty of kidneys.”
Big sis was the best and obvious choice. As she chatted and joked with the nurses in that prep room, the ease with which she volunteered her organ was apparent.
Meanwhile, on the other gurney, the Olympic gold medal-winning hurdler, the world record holder, the supreme athlete, was quietly crying. He was by his own admission freaking out, not so much worried that he’d never run again as wondering if he’d ever open his eyes again.
That was nine months ago, when doctors took LaToya’s kidney and implanted it in the right lower half of Aries’ abdomen — they did not remove either of the failing kidneys. A second surgery to relieve a build-up of blood and fluid resulted in implanting the donated kidney a bit deeper into his midsection.
The added part to the standard equipment does not go unnoticed. “I still feel it,” Aries said earlier this month. “It’s there, an extra that’s added in. You’re going to feel it, no two ways about it.”
Next week begins the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials for the Rio Summer Games beginning Aug. 5. One week in, on July 8, is the first round of the 110-meter hurdles, with the semifinals and final the following day. He must finish in the top three to make the Olympic team.
Merritt did awaken after the surgery, did resume training amid doubts that he’d never run again, and even has won a meet overseas. He and his extra kidney have a spot reserved for them in the Trials, where the odds will be long and his story irresistible.
A former runner at Wheeler High School and the University of Tennessee, Merritt relocated to the Phoenix area years ago to further his training. His mother and sister still live in Atlanta, at least those parts that Merritt didn’t take west.
Attempting to defend his Olympic title, trying to return to the apex of his sport less than a year after a major organ transplant is an audacious undertaking. Other athletes have returned to the arena following transplants — NBAers Sean Elliott and Alonzo Mourning (kidneys) and golfer Erik Compton (heart, twice). How Merritt may match up against the world’s elite so soon after major surgery, his training and his conditioning lagging behind the competition, is a big unknown.
This is man who would try to win Olympic gold again: Just five months ago, Merritt jumped his first hurdle since the surgery and reported that it “was like a baby deer trying to walk.”
Since, he has run outdoor meets in Iowa (fifth), Qatar (sixth), Shanghai (DQ), and Beijing (first). At the Prefontaine Classic in Oregon in late May, his final tune-up before the Olympic Trials, Merritt finished fourth while pulling up near the finish with a strained groin. Seeking treatment in Germany, resuming his training over hurdles Tuesday, Merritt said of the latest complication: “I could let it get to me but I’m not going to let it get to me.”
To his mind, the Trials loom as the biggest hurdle, just getting through to be part of the U.S. team more difficult than the Olympics themselves. And the competition doesn’t care about his new kidney.
To that challenge add the fact that it has been so very long time since Merritt felt right, felt his best, on the track. His 2012 was charmed, winning Olympic gold and a few weeks later setting a world record that stands today. But his performance fell, as if off a table’s edge, a year later. In late 2013 he was diagnosed both with the genetic kidney disease — collapsing focal segmental glomerulossclerosis, if you must know — and a virus that further weakened him.
After a prolonged hospital stay, Merritt returned to competition, but never back to the head of the world class. Keeping his condition under wraps, Merritt spawned nothing but bafflement as his times worsened.
By his approach to the 2015 World Championships, Merritt and his sister had agreed to the transplant immediately after his return from China. He decided to go public. And, with what has been estimated as 15 percent kidney function, he medaled at those Championships, finishing third.
For her part — and let’s not forget the other half of the transplant equation, the one who doesn’t enjoy the spotlight of the starting line — LaToya submitted to three days of both physical and psychological testing before the transplant. When, during the detailed pre-op conference, doctors explained the chances that her brother’s body would reject her kidney, LaToya only half-jokingly asked, “Well, can I have it back, then?”
She was assured there would be no long-term effects of the surgery, and that it would not prevent her from having another child later if she wanted (she had her first daughter just a few months before the transplant).
“I couldn’t sleep on my side for a week because my kidney knew it was missing a friend,” she said now. “I was in so much pain, sleeping on my brother’s couch. They said I couldn’t pick up my daughter for six weeks. That lasted for two weeks. I had to pick my baby up.”
In retrospect, LaToya has come to liken giving up a kidney to tithing — only giving a percentage of herself rather than money to improve another life.
And as both have recovered, LaToya getting back to her day-to-day life in Atlanta and Merritt back to the rigors of training, they have come to realize the potential of a story here far bigger than themselves.
In contact now with the transplant community, they have a strong sense of those they now represent during Merritt’s attempted comeback.
LaToya tells of a transplant foundation meeting that she and her brother attended, where they met an 18-year-old woman who was awaiting a second transplant after the first failed three weeks into surgery. “I told Aries go talk to her, let her know it’s going to be OK,” she said.
Her brother tells of a father whose 2-year-old son was born with malfunctioning kidneys, on dialysis now, awaiting a transplant. “He talked to me and told me my performance at the World Championships in Beijing last year had given him hope for his son. That his son can be anything if he just works at it, that it’s not going to really hinder him as much as he thought it would,” Merritt said.
A potential trip to Brazil comes with additional risks for Merritt. Because he takes immunosuppressant drugs, the specter of the Zika virus is even more threatening in his case. “My doctors are really concerned with Zika. That’s definitely an issue,” he said.
One he gladly will confront, if it means he has completed his recovery and resumed his place as an elite hurdler.
“It’s going to be a story to remember if I’m able to pull off a gold medal, or medal in general,” he said. “I’ve medaled with no kidneys at all (in the 2015 Worlds). I feel confident that at the Olympic Games I could muster out a medal.
“It would be so crazy if it happened. But first things first — let me get through the Trials.”
The brother and sister who began as rivals are now partners in this arduous quest. Where their ties were strained in the beginning, they have never been stronger than now.
That doesn’t mean that she can’t be the demanding big sister.
“I told him if he gets that gold medal, I expect to get a victory lap, too. That kidney got him to where he’s at,” LaToya, smiling broadly, said.
And that he still can’t be the bratty little brother.
“(LaToya) did say, if you win a medal that’s me crossing the line with you as well. No, actually, it’s me because it’s in my body,” Merritt said, playfully reverting to his long-ago family role while also playing the possession-is-nine-tenths-of-the-law card.
“I told her I’m the one doing all the work here. You provided the organ, I’m doing everything else.”
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