Girls Class One 100m hurdles

IF the Carifta Trials girls’ Under-18 100m hurdles final is anything to go by, then the Class One final at Champs will be a battle to the wire between Holmwood Technical’s World Youth Championships gold medallist Yanique Thompson and St Jago High’s Peta-Gay Williams.

Both young ladies, in their first year in Class One, battled to the line with Williams leading up to the eighth barrier only to be passed by the determined Thompson, who won in 13.55 seconds, her season’s best.

Both have gone faster, but no one in that age group has gone faster than Thompson who ran a Youth World Best 12.94 seconds at the WTC last year and that could be the difference three weeks after their last clash.

If both athletes, who have been battling injuries all year, make it to the final this week, it will be part three after Williams’s unfortunate disqualification in last year’s Class Two final after she false-started as Thompson went on to win the gold easily in 13.44 seconds.

Edwin Allen’s Shanice Lewis is the only other athlete to dip under 14.00 seconds, and if she can repeat, that should take the bronze.

Girls’ Class One 400m

Just as she timed her race to perfection in the final at the Carifta Trials three weeks ago, Balaclava High’s Dawnalee Loney might have timed her run for her school’s first gold medal at the ISSA Girls’ Champs when she lines up in the Class One 400m final.

Loney, who ran down and beat Petersfield’s Asaine Hall in the Western Champs final in mid-February, beat a talented field at the Carifta Trials in a big personal best of 52.87 seconds, the best so far this year.

Before she can be crowned champion, however, Loney will have to beat Vere Technical’s talented Yanique McNeil a second time, as well as Edwin Allen’s long-legged Camira Haughton, both of whom were left in her dust at Carifta Trials.

Last year Loney was third in Class Two that was won by McNeil while Hall and Haughton were finalists in Class One, and prior to her amazing run, Loney’s personal best was 54.49 seconds that she had run at Western Champs.

With the experienced Neil Harrison of Munro College guiding Loney’s track training regime, the safe money would be on the lean black-clad athlete repeating her upset at Carifta, but she might be forced to run even faster if she is to keep the Vere Tech star from winning back-to-back Champs titles with Haughton set to take third.