(This is the 12th in a series of features on Baylor Athletics' 25 for 25, which honors Baylor's top 25 athletes in the 25-year history of the Big 12 Conference (1996-21). Selected by a panel of Baylor experts, the final list was picked from a pool of over 100 candidates that came from all 19 intercollegiate sports that the school offers. Over the next couple of months, two honorees per week will be released and will also be featured during game broadcasts on the Baylor Sports Network from Learfield IMG College.)
 
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            ​In his four years at Baylor, Bayano Kamani says he "never talked." He was more the silent, lead-by-example type. 
            ​Mostly, he let his feet do his talking, winning NCAA titles in the 400-meter hurdles in 1999 and 2001 and earning a total of 12 All-America honors and nine Big 12 championships. 
            ​"It's hard to describe being an elite athlete, because I don't think it happens overnight," said Kamani, a two-time Olympian for Panama who finished fifth at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. "For me personally, I was always focused on what can I win right now. I didn't even really focus on being an Olympian or anything like that. It was just, 'How do I run faster?' That was it. The ultimate enemy was the clock, because if you can beat that, you'll beat everybody."
            ​His former Baylor coaches and teammates might be surprised to find that Kamani has turned from stoic to loquacious, becoming a marketing brand manager and strategist with adidas, based in Los Angeles. 
            ​"I see the story in everything," said the 40-year-old Kamani, who was inducted into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015. "I think that came from me just being so quiet all the time, that I was always observing and always putting a narrative in my head. I had a breakthrough where I started telling people all these things that were in my head. 
            ​"If you're trying to sell this shoe, and this shoe is all about producing energy, there's a million ways you can tell that story. It's not just, 'Oh, you just push off the ground and you're going to feel energy.' Energy means different things to different people. I enjoy connecting people and telling stories, whether it's brand stories or people stories or community stories."
            ​Bayano's story started at Houston Westbury High School, where he was a prep All-American and state champion in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles. While his older sister, Nzingah, an All-American at Baylor who set the school record in the indoor 60-meter hurdles, insists that she was the first in the family to start hurdling, Bayano says, "I don't remember it that way."
            ​"Hurdlers are just weird. Hurdlers and pole vaulters have this same psyche where normal just isn't enough," he said. "There has to be this other challenge in it for it to be worthwhile. Running an open 400 seemed kind of boring, but you put those hurdles in there, and now you have those 10 separate challenges that actually allow you to focus more on what you're doing. It's almost like breathing in and out 10 times."
            ​After suffering an injury at the 1998 NCAA Outdoor Championships, the 19-year-old Kamani was a relative unknown when he won his first NCAA title with a then-school-record clocking of 48.68. 
            ​"I think my best time before that was the 49.7 I ran at the Michael Johnson meet," he said. "Coach (Clyde) Hart would say, you don't have to worry about me in these big meets. I ran a PR in the prelims, like a 49.3, and it just felt easy. At that point, it was almost like it was downhill. You're trying to reach a mountaintop, and you'll see all these people up there, and you're trying to get past them. But, when I ran that 49.3 in the prelims, I was like, 'I'm at the top now, and they have to come and get me.' That first one was pretty special."
            ​Kamani could have gone for a threepeat as a senior in 2001, but he lost at the 2000 NCAA Outdoor Championship by two-hundredths of a second to USC's Felix Sanchez, the gold medalist at the 2004 Olympics. His runner-up time of 48.43 still ranks as the school record 21 years later. 
            ​His collegiate career could not have ended any better. Not only did he finish 1-2 in the 400 hurdles with teammate Michael Smith, Kamani ran the second leg on the 4x400 relay that won in 3:03.89, helping the Bears match their all-time best with a third-place team finish in 2001. 
            ​"I didn't run a fast time . . . I feel like Mike could have beat me if he had wanted to," Kamani said. "But turning around and seeing Mike there, it couldn't have ended any better for me at Baylor. . . . We came here and we did what we said we were doing to do all those nights playing NFL2K on PlayStation, trying to beat each other. And now, we beat everybody."
            ​While he had won a silver medal at the 1999 University Games for Team USA, Bayano's dad, Fransisco Kamani, was adamant about him running for his native country of Panama. 
            ​"I grew up watching Michael Johnson running for the U.S.," Bayano said. "I want that, I want that uniform, I want that feeling. I want all of that. But, my dad told me, 'There's something here that if you do this, you could change a lot of things in Panama.' I didn't really get it at the time."
            ​Disappointed with his fifth-place finish at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, when Bayano returned to Panama, "everyone was so happy and excited. They shut down the whole country when I ran in the finals – no commerce, nothing. No boats went through the Panama Canal. It was crazy. I love America, but nobody would ever do anything like that for an American."
            ​Four years later, when Kamani got knocked out in the semifinals, Irving Saladino won Panama's first Olympic gold medal with a first-place finish in the long jump. 
            ​"In this case, I was Mike (Smith)," Bayano said. "I wasn't the person winning, but it was a team thing."
            ​Bayano has a 15-year-old son, Bayano Jr., and he and his wife, Laché, have a 5-year-old daughter, Orca. 
 
Previous:
Jason Jennings, Baseball (1997-99)
Brittney Griner, Women's Basketball (2009-13)
Robert Griffin III, Football (2008-11)
Dawn Greathouse Siergij, Soccer (1997-2000)
Benedikt Dorsch, Men's Tennis (2002-05)
Corey Coleman, Football (2013-15)
Whitney Canion Reichenstein, Softball (2009-14)
Trayvon Bromell, Men's T&F (2014-15)
Stacey Bowers-Smith, Women's T&F (1996-99)
Andrew Billings, Football (2013-15)
Benjamin Becker, Men's Tennis (2001-05)