NEW YORK — Jamaica’s two-time Olympic and World Championship relay gold medalist Michael Frater returns to international competition, when he runs the 60-meter dash at the Millrose Games in New York on February 15.
The 31-year-old Frater, who won global 4x100m gold in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 and an individual silver in the 100m at the World Championships in Helsinki in 2005, switched training camps from MVP to Racers late in 2012, after a fallout with his coach and then spent the 2013 season focusing on rehabilitation after knee surgery.
Frater, a former All-American and Academic All-American at Texas Christian University, will be joined in the lineup by compatriot and training partner Kimmari Roach, who is familiar with Big Apple competition. Roach won at the New York adidas Grand Prix as a 20-year-old in 2011 and at Madison Square Garden where he competed in the 50m dash at the 2012 U.S. Open. Facing the Jamaicans will be the young American trio of Olympian Isiah Young, 2013 NCAA champions D’Angelo Cherry and Ameer Webb.
Young burst onto the international scene out of the University of Mississippi in 2012. He did not run track until his senior year in high school when he discovered that extracurricular participation was a graduation requirement. Four years later, he was a surprise 200m qualifier for the London Olympics. In 2013, Young dipped below 10 seconds in the 100m dash and below 20 seconds in the 200m.
Webb, who has competed at The Armory for Texas A&M University, defeated Young for the 200m NCAA title at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., last summer. A standout running back as a California high student athlete, Webb won back-to-back NCAA indoor titles for A&M in the 200m as well.
Cherry is familiar with The Armory, having won the 60m dash at the Armory Collegiate Invitational in both 2012 and 2013. Prior to that, he broke the national high school record in the 55m dash in 6.14 at the 2008 National Scholastic Invitational Championships in New York. In 2013, he won gold in the 60 at the U.S. Indoor Championships (6.49), a week before winning the NCAA title for Mississippi State in the same event.