BY KAYON RAYNOR Senior staff reporter raynork@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Asafa Powell’s poor performance at the Aviva London Grand Prix last Friday, where the former world record holder was relegated to sixth position in a pedestrian 10.26 seconds (wind -1.7 ms), has been blamed on tiredness by his agent Paul Doyle.
“He’s also tired. Coach (Stephen Francis) has prepared these guys to be ready for Berlin and you’ve got to remember that Asafa missed out on about seven or eight weeks of training with his ankle injury,” Doyle told the Observer from Monaco yesterday.
“So coach has kept the training really heavy on him, so I think in London he was just a little bit tired by the second race and didn’t want to risk any injury,” the agent added.
“If it had been a single race in London, then I think we would have seen a much better run out of Asafa, but to go through two rounds with the heavy legs that he had from training was really tough,” Doyle explained.
Powell, the reigning bronze medallist from the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, was in contention up to the 40-metre mark in London, but faded badly to finish five places behind triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt, who stopped the clock at 9.91secs.
Powell, who sustained the ankle injury in training in April, was also beaten by national junior record holder Yohan Blake (10.11), Antiguan Daniel Bailey (10.13), Britain’s Simeon Williamson (10.19) and American Ivory Williams (10.21).
Doyle expects that Powell, the second fastest man in history with 9.72secs, will rediscover his old form ahead of the 12th IAAF World Championships set for August 15 to 23 in Berlin.
Prior to his poor showing in London last weekend, Powell had produced his season best of 9.88secs at the Rome Golden League meet, where American Tyson Gay won in a world leading 9.77secs.
Meanwhile, Doyle has rubbished rumours that 2005 World Championships silver medallist Michael Frater is injured.
“No, he’s is not injured,” the agent disclosed. “Coach had a big training block for him after his last race in Rome (on July 17) and he’s just getting ready to go and do Stockholm (July 31) as his last meet in preparation (for Berlin),” Doyle said.
