MANCHESTER — When Mike Hartfield returns home to Connecticut, the first visit he makes is always to his father’s gravesite in Bloomfield.
“That’s literally the first place when I get here,” Hartfield said recently at Manchester High. “I’ll go and have a conversation.”
Lately, father and son have had plenty to catch up on.
After losing Tyrell Hartfield to an unexpected heart problem in 2010 and having his mother, Marsha McIntosh, suffer a stroke in 2013, Hartfield, who graduated from Manchester High in 2008, has risen to the top of the world in the long jump, finishing third at the last two U.S. outdoor track and field championships.
He enters the Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore., on July 2 tied for the fourth best jump in the world this season (8.34 meters) and is a favorite to make his first Olympic team.
“When you go through so much, it makes you grow up fast,” Hartfield said. “I’ve been through some really tough things, some horrible things, but I feel like on the other side of that there is something great that is going to come from all of that.”
The finals of the trials, if he qualifies, are July 3.
At the trials four years ago, Hartfield missed the team by three spots, taking sixth with a jump of 7.79 meters (25 feet, 6 3/4 inches). But after moving across the country, changing coaches, signing a professional contract with Adidas and enduring heartache on the track and off, he approaches the sport with a renewed confidence and focus.
“A lot has changed in four years, I’m a completely different athlete at this point,” Hartfield said. “I remember in 2012 just thinking I have to go out there and do something crazy to make the team. That was never realistic. But now I’m ranked third in the world and going into the U.S. trials I look at it as just another meet.”
At the World Championships a year ago in Beijing, Hartfield was in third place after the first day of competition, but the second day brought disappointment. He fouled on all his jumps and failed to make the podium.
“Everything we worked for was right there,” Hartfield said. “Going into that final, I wasn’t even nervous. I remember being excited. It was almost to the point I was too excited. Yeah, I was just too excited.”
In front of the biggest stage possible on the final day, Hartfield left the competition with no mark. He had changed his approach that day so he could bring more speed into the board.
“The opportunity was there for me, it was there for the taking, it was my time to shine and get a medal and bring it home and make everybody proud and I ruined it,” Hartfield said. “I was just more disappointed in myself.”
The protective cover on his phone, emblazoned with the flag of Brazil, serves as a constant reminder of his goals and potential after last year’s mistake.
“It is almost to the point where I feel like I’m an Olympian already and now I just have to prove it to everybody else,” Hartfield said.
About a month ago, Hartfield, who graduated from Ohio State in 2013, came home to recharge. He met with family and friends, stayed with his grandmother, Bernice Hartfield, in Wethersfield, worked out in his old weight room at Manchester High and met with former coach Thayer Redman, who picked him out as a long jumper when he was just a basketball player messing around at track practice.
When he jumps next week at the trials, he’ll compete with Buffalo Bills wide receiver Marquise Goodwin and Arkansas track phenom Jarrion Lawson. Goodwin jumped 8.33 meters to win the trials in 2012 and has jumped 8.45 this year. Lawson became only the second athlete to win the 100, 200 and the long jump at the NCAA Outdoor Championships this spring. The first? Jesse Owens.
Marquis Dendy, who has won the last two national championships, indoors and outdoors, has also qualified for the trials with a jump of 8.38 and Jarvis Gotch has jumped 8.24.
A long, tough road
Hartfield never thought the Olympics were a realistic goal. But his father did. He wanted him to go to Ohio State and he wanted him to compete against the best in the world.
A month before he went to Ohio State, his father died at 43 from heart complications after playing a pickup basketball.
Hartfield and his father were close. He would remind his son, “You’re not just good, you’re great.”
“I take the Hartfield name with me around the world and I try to have everybody know it,” Hartfield said. “I’m a product of him.”
Three years after losing his father, Hartfield got a call in February at Ohio State. His mother, who had moved to Raleigh, N.C., with his younger siblings, had suffered a stroke at 41. Hartfield was 22.
“It was really bad, to the point when I got the call they were saying she might be a vegetable,” Hartfield said. “I obviously dropped everything, went to North Carolina to be with her.”
His mother has improved, but is still not herself. She can’t speak. She lives in a rehabilitation center. He wants to bring a medal back to her.
Hartfield’s determination only intensified.
“You got to use it, when all these things happened, track is like my escape,” Hartfield said.
After graduating from Manchester, Hartfield went to Rend Lake College, where he won the national junior college title in the long jump, and then to Ohio State, where he broke Owens’ 77-year-old Ohio State record in the long jump with a jump of 8.15 (26-8 3/4) and finished third at the 2013 NCAA Division I Championships.
In 2012, he traveled to Eugene for his first trials experience and the following year he had his best college season, breaking Owens’ record, finishing third at the championships.
After graduating from Ohio State, he got an email from the U.S. Olympic committee offering him the opportunity to train with the team.
“They said ‘I had podium potential,'” Hartfield said.
So a year after the trials, Hartfield made the biggest decision of his life. He headed to Chula Vista, Calif., to live at the Olympic Center and train under U.S. jump coach Al Joyner.
“I packed up the Honda, TV in the back, and just drove from Connecticut to California,” Hartfield said.
Hartfield was in a new state, without any of his friends or family and with a new coach, who had new methods and training techniques.
“I jumped very similar to what I did in college. I came out of college and my personal best was 8.15, which is 26-9 and I think my [personal record] was still 8.15 legally that next year,” Hartfield said. “I wasn’t really consistent with what I was doing, but I knew I could compete against those guys and I wanted to prove it to myself and everybody else.”
Soon enough, he started to prove it.
Hartfield went on to finish third at the 2014 Outdoor Track and Field Championships, recording a mark of 8.03 (26-4). He then jumped 8.27 (27-1 1/2) to defeat training partner Jeff Henderson at the World Challenge Beijing meet in 2015 and made the longest jump of his career at 8.42 (27-7 1/4) to finish third behind Dendy and Henderson at the 2015 Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Hartfield was making all the right changes. He started eating better, resting properly. He grew up.
“It was really just a mindset shift, where I just really wanted it bad,” Hartfield said.
Said Hartfield: “When I was just at the gravesite when I got [to Connecticut at the start of June], I was like, ‘I could never imagine my life to be what it is now. But you always could.’ Then I stopped myself and I was like, ‘Nah you couldn’t even see this right here,’ I started laughing.”
