Carter to run indoors for second straight year
BY DANIA BOGLE Observer staff reporter
Monday, January 03, 2011
AFTER competing indoors for the first time in his career in 2010 and registering his best season ever, lowering his personal best thrice, improving his status as Jamaica’s third fastest sprinter and clocking a world leading time, Nesta Carter hopes to make it two-times lucky as he makes preparations to race indoors again this year.
The diminutive sprinter plans to compete in the men’s 60 metres at the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in New York in February as part of his preparation for the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Daegu, South Korea from August 27 to September 4.
Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter in a preseason training session at UTech on Thursday.
Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter in a preseason training session at UTech on Thursday. 1/1
Last year, Carter raced indoors for the first time as a professional, clocking a season’s best 6.54 seconds in the heats of the men’s 60 metres at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham in February.
He later finished a disappointing seventh in 6.72 seconds in the final of the men’s 60m at the World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar in March.
However, it was later in the year when he went outdoors that Carter’s real talent shone through.
The Olympic 4x100m relay gold medallist lowered his personal best by a staggering 0.13 seconds throughout the season from 9.91 seconds to a world-leading 9.78 seconds.
The former Manchester High student clocked a blistering 9.86 seconds to win the men’s 100m at the Spitzen Leichtathletik Luzern athletics meeting in Notwill, Switzerland in a meet record and in a time .05 seconds faster than the 9.91 seconds he posted in Shanghai in September 2008.
He improved that time to 9.85 seconds in Brussels, Belgium a few weeks later.
Then in September in Rieti, Italy, on the same track his MVP teammate Asafa Powell set a world record in 2007, Carter posted a world-leading and personal best 9.78 seconds to win the men’s 100m.
“We at MVP are always designing programmes that are in the best interest of the respective athletes and we feel an indoor programme will serve him very well as he looks to the World Championships,” MVP Track and Field Club president Bruce James told the Observer yesterday.
Carter ran the lead leg in Jamaica’s world record 4x100m gold medal win at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and James added that the tricky indoor surface suits Carter’s quick reaction time well.
“Being one of the best starters in the world serves him well when he runs indoors,” James concluded.