Sally Pearson Returns with a Bang
March 2: Australian hurdler Sally Pearson was in scorching form on Saturday night. The 2011 World Athlete of the Year and London 2012 Olympic 100m hurdles champion had her first indoor outing since winning the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships 60m hurdles crown almost two years ago but proved that she will be a difficult person to dethrone this week in Sopot, Poland, when she sped to a world-leading 7.79 in her heat followed by 7.80m in the final.
Her own area record of 7.73, set when winning in Istanbul in 2012, and Lolo Jones’ championship record of 7.72, recorded in 2010, could be under threat.
A distant second in Berlin was Germany’s in-form Nadine Hildebrand with 7.98, who just edged out Yvette Lewis, the latter finishing third and equaling her own Panamanian record of 7.99.
Lendore Smashes T&T Record
Mar. 2: Deon Lendore smashed his own indoor men’s 400m national record when he ran 45.03secs for gold at the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Indoor Track and Field Championships, in Texas, USA yesterday.
Lendore’s clocking was 12-hundredths of a second faster than his old Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) standard of 45.15. With his 45.03 effort, the Texas A&M University student jumped from 10th to joint-sixth on the all-time world performance list, with American Torrin Lawrence. Lendore is at the top of the 2014 performance list, while his T&T teammate, Lalonde Gordon is second at 45.17.
Jamaican Agency Fires Doping Control Officer
March 1: The Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) has been dismissed Paul Wright from his post as a doping control officer.
E-mail questions sent to JADCO yesterday regarding the matter were not answered up to press time, but Wright, who has been in the post since its inception in 2005, confirmed to the Jamaica Observer newspaper that he no longer works for the agency.
“Yes, from the middle of November last year,” Wright revealed this past Sunday.
When asked the reason for his dismissal, he said: “No sir, they didn’t say why. They just said they are restructuring.”
However, he hinted that his dismissal could have been as a result of a statement he made to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in an interview published a few days earlier. He was quoted then as saying that the country’s recent rash of failed drug tests might be the “tip of the iceberg.”