(Kingston) Hard blow for the Jamaican sprint one month before the Paris Olympic Games. Double Olympic 100m and 200m champion Elaine Thompson-Herah will not defend her titles this summer due to an Achilles tendon injury.
The 31-year-old Jamaican star, five-time Olympic champion (100-200 m in Rio in 2016, 100-200-4×100 m in Tokyo in 2021) said on Wednesday evening that she was “devastated to miss the Olympic Games this year”.
“But at the end of the day, it’s about sport and my health comes first,” Thompson-Herah wrote in a statement posted on her social media as the daunting Jamaican trials begin Thursday in Kingston.
The sprint star had already given up on participating in the half-lap in Paris and had initially only registered for the 100m for these trials.
In New York at the beginning of June, Elaine Thompson-Herah finished last in the 100m with a time (11.48 sec) far from her standards. She had taken off her spikes straight away and had to be carried, grimacing, off the track.
She said Wednesday that she immediately realized the severity of her injury. “I sat on the ground because I couldn’t put any pressure on my leg while I was being carried off the track,” she wrote. A medical examination revealed a “small tear” in the Achilles tendon, she adds.
“I returned home with the firm intention of continuing to push and prepare for the national trials, in order to have another chance to participate in my third Olympic Games, but my leg did not allow me to do so,” she regretted.
Not enough, however, to mark the end of her career as a sprinter, she assured when she had already failed to qualify individually for the world championships in Budapest last summer.
“It’s a long road, but I’m ready to start again, keep working, make a full recovery and return to my track career,” she wrote.
The Jamaican sprint is struggling
Five-time Olympic champion without any individual world champion title, Elaine Thompson-Herah became in 2021 in Tokyo the first woman to retain her Olympic titles in 100m and 200m after her double five years earlier in Rio.
She also holds the second fastest time in history on the straight (10.54 sec in 2021) just behind world record holder Florence Griffith-Joyner (10.49 sec in 1988).
Without her, the Jamaican selections look even more open than expected after a start to the summer where the country’s stars are struggling to exist behind the Americans, Sha’Carri Richardson in the lead.
Shericka Jackson, reigning world champion in the 200m and vice-world champion in the 100m, is only at 44e place in the world report of the season on the half lap of the track with a time of 22 sec 69, very far from his performances last year.
As for ten-time world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who dreams of bidding farewell to the track in Paris at age 37, she has only run one 100m this season which she completed in 11.15 dry. There are 71 of them who were faster than her this summer.