Greene: Ja’s sprint dominance will continue
FORMER 100 metres world record holder Maurice Greene believes the United States will have to wait for at least another five years before regaining their dominance in world sprinting.
The American’s comments come on the heels of Jamaican dominance of the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relays at the last two global championships –the 2008 Beijing Olympics and last summer’s 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin.
He expects Jamaica’s ascendancy to continue in the near future. “At least five to six years,” Greene said.
“I mean, you have Usain (Bolt)… who knows how long he’s going to run? So we’ll have to compete against that monster for a while, and I don’t really see anyone in the United States at this time other than Tyson (Gay) that’s going to step up and compete against time,” the two-time Olympic 100m medallist said.
Prior to the Berlin World Championship where Bolt secured gold medals in the 100 and 200 metres, American athletes had won both events on eight occasions at the previous 11 meets.
On the women’s side, Veronica Campbell Brown and Shelly-Ann Fraser stopped the Americans’ string of two consecutive gold in the 100m at the World Championships.
The American women had secured six gold medals over 100m in the previous 11 World Championships.
Greene, who holds the fourth fastest time in history of 9.79 seconds over 100m, hinted that the American athletics administrators must do more to regenerate competitive interest in the events they’ve dominated for more than two decades.
“We need to do something with our youth in America, we’ve got to do something to bring them along and to help them out,” he stated.
Ironically, Greene is currently in the island to attend tomorrow’s sixth staging of the Douglas Forrest Invitational, one of Jamaica’s many Development Meets on the JAAA calender.
In the meantime, Greene has thrown his support behind the proposed USA versus Jamaica challenge series, which is being discussed by both federations.
“I personally would not want to be in that (Challenge) now because you’ll will dominate the most of the events,” Greene joked.
“But it would bring a lot of excitement to the sport and that’s always good, so it would be a lot of fun,” he added.
