Fraser-Pryce seeks 200m marker at Eugene Diamond League / Photo: © AFP/File
Fraser-Pryce seeks 200m marker at Eugene Diamond League
Jamaican sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce says the 200m at the Eugene Diamond League meeting on Saturday could be a key pointer as she weighs whether to pursue a 100-200m double at the World Championships on the same Hayward Field track in July.
"I'm excited about the 200 (Saturday) because you kind of now see, OK, this is where I am at, this is how I feel," the 35-year-old Jamaican, who notched a world-leading 10.67sec in the 100m this month, said in Eugene on Friday.
At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, she will be up against Tokyo Olympic 200m finalists Shaunae Miller-Uibo and World Indoor 60m champion Mujinga Kambundji.
Fraser-Pryce, who broke 22 seconds for the first time last year, finished fourth in the 200m at the Tokyo Games and has clocked 22.79sec already this year in the half-lap sprint.
But the eight-time Olympic medallist, whose 11 World Championships medals include nine gold, said she will only decide after the Jamaican trials in June whether to attempt the 100-200 double at World in Eugene.
As the defending World Champion from Doha in 2019, Fraser-Pryce has a 100m berth for worlds and she is not convinced another double is right for her.
"Last year doubling was hard," she said Friday. "I thought it would be easy but it was very hard.
"It depends on how you feel, because some mornings I feel really good and then the next morning I feel 35," she said with a laugh.
"I am running at my national championships both the 100 and the 200, so after I secure my spot at 200 I have the option of deciding (whether to double)."
The women's 200m is just one of the loaded fields at the Eugene meeting, where Jamaica's Elaine Thompson-Herah -- the 2016 and 2020 Olympic champion over 100m and 200m -- heads a women's 100m field that also includes US star Sha'Carri Richardson, Britain's world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith and Olympic bronze medallist Shericka Jackson.
Thompson-Herah, who said Friday she has been battling a nagging Achilles injury and struggled with a shoulder injury, was a late withdrawal from the Birmingham Diamond League meeting last week, but easily won the 100m at a meeting in Kingston in 10.94sec.
The men's 100m will be without Italian Olympic champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs, but silver medallist Fred Kerley of the United States and Canadian bronze medallist Andre De Grasse will line up along with reigning world champion Christian Coleman.
- Schedule shift -
Coleman clocked 10.09sec at a meeting in Tokyo this month in his first race at the distance since his suspension for breaching anti-doping rules.
Erriyon Knighton, who at just 18 became the fourth-fastest man in history at the 200m this month with a time of 19.49sec, could become the first high-schooler to run under 10 seconds in the 100m.
Also entered are Noah Lyles, the reigning 200m world champion, and Trayvon Bromell, who clocked a wind-aided 9.75sec at a meeting in Florida on May 1.
With rain forecast for Saturday, officials rescheduled the pole vault, high jump and discus for Friday night, when Uganda's Tokyo Olympic gold medallist Joshua Cheptegei was already slated to make an attempt to improve his own 5,000m world record of 12:35.36, set in 2020.
Sweden's Armand Duplantis, who set a pole vault world record of 6.20m at the World Indoor Championships in March, welcomed the move.
"I think I'd rather anything than jump in the rain," Duplantis said.
(L.Chastain--LPdF)
