Russell joins elite group of J’can female sprinter with 10.98 PB
MONTEGO BAY, St James —Carrie Russell joined a select group of elite Jamaican female sprinters yesterday after she ran a personal best 10.98 seconds (0.5m/s wind) to win the 100m race at the Weltklasse Zurich IAAF Diamond League meeting.
The former St Thomas Technical and The Queen’s School runner who won the FISU World University Games 100m title in 2011, became the eighth fastest Jamaican woman over the distance and ninth to go under the 11.00-second barrier.
World and Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce leads the Jamaican list with the National Record 10.70 seconds set last year at the JAAA National Senior Championships followed by Merelene Ottey’s 10.74 seconds set in Milan, Italy, in 1996 with Kerron Stewart in third place with 10.76 seconds set in Rome in 2009 and just ahead of Veronica Campbell Brown’s 10.76 seconds, set in Ostrava in May 2011.
Sherone Simpson is sixth on the list with her personal best 10.82 seconds followed by Juliet Cuthbert’s 10.83 seconds, Tayna Lawrence’s 10.93 seconds, Simone Facey’s 10.95 seconds set at altitude in Boulder, Colorado, with Russell’s new personal best next.
The only other Jamaican female to go under the 11.00-second barrier is Beverly McDonald who ran 10.99 seconds.
Yesterday, the 2013 IAAF World Championships 4x100m relay gold medallist lowered her previous personal best from 11.05 seconds which she ran twice at the WUG in China in 2011, taking .07 seconds to land in the all-time Jamaican top 10.
American Alexandria Anderson, who was seventh in the women’s 100m final at the World Championships less than two weeks ago, was second in 11.02 seconds with Germany’s Verena Sailer third in 11.21 seconds.
Jamaica’s World Championships finalists Kerron Stewart placed fourth in 11.28 seconds and Natasha Morrison was fifth in 11.33 seconds.
Meanwhile, a Jamaican women 4x100m relay team of Russell, Stewart, Morrison and Fraser-Pryce was second to an American team in 41.78 seconds.
The Americans ran a Diamond League and meeting record 41.67 seconds.
In the women’s 400m hurdles, outgoing champion Kaliese Spencer ran a season’s best 54.22 seconds for second place behind the dominant Czech Suzanna Hejnova’s 53.32 seconds as she wrapped up the Diamond race title and the US$40,000 award.
