http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120202/sports/sports4.html
Hubert Lawrence, Gleaner Writer
Since 2005, the top of the 100-metre world rankings has been held by three Jamaicans and one American, Carmelita Jeter.
According to Track and Field News, Jeter has been on top for the last three years, with Veronica Campbell-Brown in 2005 and 2007, Sherone Simpson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in the ascendancy in 2006 and 2008, respectively.
It stands to reason that these women and Kerron Stewart, number two in 2008 and number three in 2009, are at the verge of a glorious battle for Olympic glory.
The quartet of fast Jamaicans has a combined total of 79 sub-11 seconds 100-metre clockings. The undisputed world leader in this category is Merlene Ottey, with 67. Ottey’s best - the former national record of 10.74 seconds - came when she was 36.
VCB has 33 sub-11 times. Stewart has 20. Fraser-Pryce, the reigning Olympic champion, has 14, including the current national record of 10.73 seconds, and Simpson has 12. Jeter has visited this speed zone on 26 occasions.
Jamaica’s overall sub-11 total is 153. That’s roughly 25 per cent of the worldwide total of 595 (performances of sub-11:00sec).
That’s remarkable for a country with less than three million inhabitants.
This race isn’t only for the swift, but also for she who starts fast. Track statisticians largely believe the world record - 10.49 seconds by the late Florence Griffith-Joyner - was wind-aided. Nevertheless, data on her speed at certain checkpoints makes interesting reading.
Flo Jo is estimated to have reached the 60-metre mark in 6.86 seconds. In the Berlin World Championships, Fraser-Pryce covered the same distance in 6.88 seconds. Irina Privalova’s world indoor record for that distance is 6.92 and VCB ran seven seconds flat to win the 2010 World Indoor Championships, beating Jeter into third.
It’s hard to know what to make of such data. Stewart, for example, has an indoor 60-metre personal best of 7.14 seconds, but in the Berlin epic, she arrived at the 60-metre mark in 6.96 seconds en route to silver and a personal-best matching time of 10.75 seconds.
Indoor meets, like those where Asafa Powell and VCB won 50-metre sprints last weekend, are held early in the year and top athletes are probably in better shape when the summer rolls around.
The first-ever sub-seven was run by Ottey in her heyday. Ironically, it was exactly 6.96 seconds.
While Fraser-Pryce is consistently the best starter, VCB, Stewart and Jeter are at the other end of the spectrum.
Usually, VCB has the finish expected of a two-time Olympic 200-metre champion. Stewart is a sub-22 girl as well, with a bronze from the 2008 Beijing Games. Recently, Jeter has come to the 200, with a silver-medal finish in Daegu behind VCB, but ahead of the wonderful Allyson Felix.
The mould doesn’t always stay the same. In 2010, VCB out-started Fraser-Pryce to run 10.78 seconds in Eugene, Oregon. Last week, in New York, Queen V blitzed 50 metres in 6.08 seconds. She, Jeter and Stewart will no doubt be working on their starts so they can engage top gear early enough to make a telling difference in the races that count.
On the contrary, Fraser-Pryce is no slouch over 200 metres. Her visits there have yielded a national title, a win over VCB last year and a personal best, from lane one, in the 2008 Jamaican Championships, of 22.15 seconds.
One response to last week’s ponderings in this space, ‘Everyone wants the 100’, was impatience. One colleague wrote saying he could hardly wait for the women’s 100 at both our national championships and at the London Olympics.
Perhaps, we will get a sneak preview at the Jamaica Invitational. Jeter has raced here twice, edging Stewart in 2010 and outrunning Kerry-Ann Baptiste of Trinidad and Tobago, Stewart and Simpson in 2011. VCB wasn’t in those contests and hasn’t yet raced the top-rated American on home soil.
If it suits her plans, perhaps VCB will run the 100 this time. That would give fans the Olympic preview they dream of. Then the real waiting, for the Jamaican Championships and the Games, would really begin.
Hubert Lawrence has covered athletics since 1987.
