Paul A. Reid, Staff Reporter

WESTERN BUREAU:

NATIONAL CHAMPIONS Usain Bolt and Loraine Fenton will not defend their men's 200m and women's 400m titles at this weekend's Supreme Ventures National Senior Championships to be held at the National Stadium this weekend.

President of the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA), Patrick Anderson, confirmed yesterday that both athletes would miss the meet, both having submitted medical reports asking to be exempt from competing.

The Trials will help select the teams for the NCACA Under 23 Champion-ships in Sher-brooke, Canada July 30-August 1 and the 28th Olympic Games to be held in Athens, Greece, August 13-29.

Anderson said the selection committee of the JAAA will now meet to decide what next to do, "yes we got the letters" he said, "we now have to look into it and see where we go from here."

JAAA RULES

The rules of the JAAA stipulate that the first two across the line will be selected for the meets with the third spot left up to the discretion of the selection committee based on a number of criteria including if they have made the qualifying standards, their fitness level and the strength of their going into the meet.

Both athletes had missed the inaugural Jamaica International Invitational meet held at the National Stadium on May 7 also because of injuries.

It is uncertain what was the nature of Fenton's injury as she has missed the entire season so far while Bolt, it is understood, is still recovering from a hamstring strain he suffered in late April.

Bolt injured his left hamstring in training on April 30, a week after he ran a sub 45 seconds 400m leg for a Jamaica 4x400m relay team at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Norman Peart, Bolt's manager told The Gleaner late yesterday that the athlete had fully recovered from the injury but was "not race fit, having not trained properly and consistently in the last six weeks. A decision was taken that he should not run and will now train and prepare properly to defend his 200m title at the IAAF/ Coca Cola World Junior Championships in Italy next month.

In addition to the injury, Peart said Bolt was sitting a number of external examinations, which also impacted on the time he had to train.

Concerns were raised earlier this month when Bolt who set the world junior record of 19.93 seconds in the 200m at the CARIFTA Games in Hamilton, Bermuda in April pulled out of what were to be his European debuts at a Golden Spike meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic and the Bislett Games in Bergen, Norway.

He instead travelled to London where he consulted with an Australian physiotherapist Cameron Johnson and also got treated by an Osteopath, a specialist who manipulates the skeleton and muscles.

Hubert Lawrence, Contributor

IF YOU'RE inside the National Stadium this Saturday at approximately 7.05 p.m., stay in your seat. Forget any quick trips to the bathroom and bite back any pangs of hungry.

Give in to those urges and you could miss the best National Championships 100 metre race for women in years. Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell are co-favourites with Aleen Bailey, Tayna Lawrence and schoolgirl Simone Facey all chasing spots on the Jamaican team to the Athens Olympic Games.

Not since Juliet Cuthbert upset Merlene Ottey in the 1992 Olympic Trials has the National Championship 100 been a more enticing prospect.

STRONG CLAIMS

Simpson and Campbell both have strong claims to Olympic team spots and solid chances for medals in Athens. The former has come a long way since her days at Manchester High School. Just last year, she sprinted to a noteworthy personal best of 11.37 behind Kerron Stewart at VMBS Championships. With just one season of guidance from coach Stephen Francis at UTECH, Simpson has really blossomed. Her times stand as testimony - 11.11 at the Gibson Relays and 11.01 seconds in Grenada on May 29.

Campbell has returned from a quiet 2003 season to add to her impressive resume. Even a partial list is long and glittering - World Youth Champion, World Junior Champion, Junior College Champion, and in 2004, NCAA Indoor 200 champion. A minor mid-season injury concern is past and VC is ready to improve on the personal best - 11.00 seconds - that won her a silver medal at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

PERSONAL BENCHMARK

Bailey is the reigning National Champion, and ran all the way to the World Championship 100 metre final and a personal benchmark of 11.07 seconds. If the work she has done to improve her start pays off, she too could be on the way to Athens.

This speedy trio seem to be ahead of the rest of the field but Lawrence could be in the picture if she returns to the form that earned her a Olympic bronze medal four years ago.

She made the Jamaica team for the first time in 1998, outran the Ottey/Peta-Gaye Dowdie controversy in 2000 and broke the 11-second barrier in 2002. She has the fastest personal best of the contenders at 10.93 seconds.

Dowdie has quietly re-emerged on the scene. Her top speed is undiminished but her start will need to be sharp if she is to repeat her Olympic trials win of four years ago.

The yearly list pinpoints Facey, who blasted Campbell's VMBS records with times of 11.22 and 22.71, as one with a chance to make the team.

Swift long jumper Elva Goulbourne, curve specialist Bev McDonald and hurdlers Brigitte Foster, Lacena Golding-Clarke and Vonette Dixon give Jamaica a deep pool of speed which may also include 2001 World 200 metre Indoor Champion Juliet Campbell. The right selection will give Jamaica a chance to match or surpass the silver medal won in the 4x100 relay in Sydney.

Thanks to THG, the USA will be without Kelli White in Athens but if the Americans lose Marion Jones and Chryste Gaines as well, the red-white-and-blue baton bearers will be beatable. The real danger is France whose co-ordinated quartet took gold at home in Paris in last year's World Championships. Christine Arron and two former World Junior 200 champions supply the speed for the French.

NATIONAL RECORD

Win, lose or draw, Jamaica should break the national record of 41.94 set in 1991 by a World Champion line-up including Ottey, Cuthbert and McDonald.

Ottey, Cuthbert and Grace Jackson set high standards for the current crop of Jamaicans in the women's sprints. Happy days could be here again if today's speedsters live up to their promise. Stage one of the Jamaican sprint revival starts at 7.05 p.m. at the Olympics Trials this Friday. Don't miss it.

Howard Campbell, Freelance Writer

HAVING GOTTEN over the stage fright of appearing at her first Olympics in 1984, Grace Jackson was a far more composed athlete approaching the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. She was also more ambitious and wanted to make a mark in a big way.

"On my wall one of my goals was to achieve a time of 21.71 seconds for the 200 metres. And I wanted to feel what was it like running a world record," Jackson said last week.

The leggy Jackson never got that world record, but she came close enough in achieving her personal record. She returned 21.72 seconds in the final of the 200, taking the silver medal behind American sensation Florence Griffiths-Joyner who won the sprint double. The 200 metres gold was won in a world record 21.34 seconds.

TOP-NOTCH 100 METRES FIELD

The 200 metre run sealed a satisfying championship for Jackson who had placed fourth in a top-notch 100 metres field. The Queen's High School 'old girl' ran that course in a wind-aided 10.97 seconds, coming in behind Griffiths-Joyner (10.54), the evergreen American Evelyn Ashford (10.83) and East Germany's Heike Drecshler (10.85) all of whom had gone into the championship as medal contenders.

Jackson, who had placed fifth and sixth in the 100 and 200 metres at the Los Angeles Games four years earlier, says of all the events she competed in at three Olympics the semi-finals of the 100 metres at Seoul was by far her most challenging.

"In the second round of the 100 everyone ran 10.9-something, I ran a time of 11.08 which was my best time at that point so in the semi-final line-up I had the second slowest time," she recalled. "And I remember the night before saying to Bert Cameron, 'look at this line-up for my semi-finals, which one of us will not make it'?"

Jackson had reason to be concerned; in her semi were her more established teammate Merlene Ottey, Drecshler and Pauline Davis of The Bahamas. But on the day of the event Ottey withdrew due to injury and Jackson says that improved her chances of making the final which she did by placing fourth in 11.03 behind the classy Drecshler.

She says there was less pressure in the final which was expected to be dominated by Griffiths-Joyner and Ashford, the latter being the 1984 champion. It went true to form with Drecschler taking the bronze, but Jackson completed a remarkable round by finishing fourth.

"I got lane eight and was last at 50 metres but I had lots left in me, and I lifted and extended and finished fourth in 10.97 so I had improved on my time in Los Angeles and that was a great accomplishment," she said.

With the exception of Ashford, Jackson came up against pretty much the same opposition in the final of the 200 metres and says she ran a similar race ­ coming off the pace to achieve two personal milestones.

ACHIEVED MY GOAL

"I had achieved my goal of winning a medal at the Olympics and I remember an English reporter coming up and asking me if I knew what time I ran. It was 21.72 and I said 'Yes!'"

For all her consistency, Jackson was never regarded as a world-beater but a versatile athlete. At Queen's, in addition to track events she competed in the high jump and in hurdles.

During her years at Alabama A&M, she continued to do the high jump and hurdles but switched to track when she moved to New York to attend Queen's College and joined the Atoms Track Club. In 1983, she represented Jamaica for the first time at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.

Her final Olympic appearance came at Atlanta in 1992 where she competed in the 200 metres. She placed sixth behind the winner, American Gwen Torrence, but ended her career by making the final of every individual event she ran in at sports biggest showpiece.