Motivated Lee targets sub-10 clocking
MONTEGO BAY, St James — There was no beating around the bush for two-time IAAF World Junior Championships (WJC) 100m champion Dexter Lee when he was asked what was his aim for this season.
“I just need to run faster and keep improving,” he told the Jamaica Observer a week ago at the Penn Relays. “Training has been going well and I am training much better than last season.”
Lee appeared to be on the verge of a breakout in the 2012 season after making the Jamaican team to the IAAF World Championships in 2011 in Daegu, South Korea, where he won a gold medal as part of the men’s 4x100m relay team. A year earlier in his build-up to retain his WJC title in Moncton, Canada, he ran what is still his personal best 10.06 seconds at a meeting in Brazil.
He switched from his long-time coach Claude Grant early in the 2012 season, but failed to get back under 10.10 seconds, running a season’s best 10.15 seconds at the Jamaica International Invitational, and watched athletes he was ahead of get the better of him. He even failed to get into the final of the 100m at the Supreme Ventures National Trials last year.
This period is over and done with and his focus is this year and beyond, as he seeks to get back on track. Lee, who is training with the SWEPT group under Akiel Stewart, said. “Last season I just did not get into the new training at all, but this year is different and things are going well.”
A poor start at the Chris Brown Invitational in the Bahamas saw him run an opening 10.23 seconds, but he looked strong running the second leg on the Jamaican team that was second to the USA at the Penn Relays last week.
This weekend, Lee says a new personal best and a sub-10-second time at the Jamaica International Invitational are his immediate goals. “We have to run under 10 seconds to have any chance to make any Jamaican men’s team and it appears it will take 9.80 seconds even to make the team,” he said.
Lee, who will run at a meet in Puerto Rico after the JII meet, has his eyes and mind set on a place on the Jamaican team to Moscow, and he says he plans to use last season’s disappointment as motivation to run faster this year.
