LONDON, England — Double Olympic sprint champion, Elaine Thompson was never down to run the 4x100m relays, revealed her MVP Coach Stephen Francis in an exclusive interview with OBSERVER ONLINE.

Thompson, Jamaica’s sprint queen, was surprisingly missing from the starting line-up of the bronze medal winning 4x100m relay quartet and was just ran out of gold by the United States of America who won in 41.82 seconds and Great Britain with 42.12s.

“She was never ever going to run the relay because of her Achilles,” said Francis.

So with that, Jamaica had to depend on Jura Levy, Natasha Morrison, Simone Facey and Shashalee Forbes and they gave a more than credible display in securing third in a season’s best time of 42.19s. But had Thompson ran, the general feeling is that Jamaica would have won.

“Ever since she developed the Achilles problem at Prefontaine (Classic), the policy has always been that whenever she has run in the sprint spikes, we normally give her seven days or so before she goes back in them,” he noted.

“She trains in the sneakers. She got a heel spikes which she could train in, so we give her seven to eight days to cool down before we put her back in the sprint spikes,” he explained.

Thompson, who was the heavy favourite for the 100m gold here at the London World Championship, finished fifth in 10.98s, a pedestrian time by her standards.

Francis explained that running the three individual races had taken a toll on her and then added to the vomiting issue, Thompson was out of the relays.

“It was almost going to be never on, primarily because of the Achilles, but exacerbated by the problem she had before the final and the semi-final,” he noted.

Howard Walker