Jamaican sprinting has been dealt a blow one month before the Paris Olympics. Double Olympic champion in the 100m and 200m 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 (100-200m in Rio in 2016, 100-200-4x100m 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 pulled out of the half-lap in Paris and had initially only entered the 100m for the trials.
“Small tear” of the Achilles tendon
In New York in early June, Elaine Thompson-Herah finished last in the 100m with a time (11.48 sec) that was far from her standards. She immediately took off her spikes and had to be carried, grimacing, off the track. She said Wednesday that she immediately realized the seriousness of her injury. “I sat on the ground because I couldn’t put any pressure on my leg while they carried me off the track,” she wrote.
A medical examination revealed a “small tear” in her Achilles tendon. “I went 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.
However, this is not enough to mark the end of her sprinting career, she assured, having 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, to continue working, to fully recover and to resume my track career,” she wrote.
The Jamaican sprint is struggling
A 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 the 100m and 200m after her double five years earlier in Rio. She also holds the second fastest time in history on the straight line (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 struggled 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 in 44th place in the world rankings for the season in the half-lap with a time of 22″69, very far from her performances of last year.
As for ten-time world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who dreams of saying goodbye to the track in Paris at the age of 37, she has only run one 100m this season, which she completed in 11″15. There are 71 other women who have been faster than her this summer.
