With the 2025 track and field season fast approaching, star sprinter Oblique Seville says he has done a lot of work to improve his mental strength ahead of the new campaign and has indicated that he is also generally better prepared for the challenges ahead.

Seville, 23, a front-runner among the current crop of Jamaican male sprinters delivered a strong build-up to the Paris Olympic Games and was favoured to win a medal in the men’s 100m event in the French capital. However, he pulled up just before the finish line due to a groin injury and ended up finishing eight in the event. It was the athlete’s third consecutive appearance in the 100m final at a major championships, finishing fourth in the medal round at the 2022 and 2023 World Athletics Championships in Eugene and Budapest, respectively.

In Paris, the gold medal was claimed by American Noah Lyles, while Seville’s teammate, Kishane Thompson, took the silver, while the bronze went to another American Fred Kerley.

Coached by the legendary Glen Mills, Seville is the second-fastest Jamaican in the world this year, with a personal best of 9.81 seconds. Thompson will end the year with the fastest time in the world, with his personal best run of 9.77 seconds.

Seville noted that he has learned a lot from competing in his first Olympic Games and as a result, he is much more mentally and physically prepared to handle the challenges of the 2025 season.

“You have to move past that because that is just a thing of the past, and moving forward, you just have to make up for the mistakes you made last year (2024) and put it into this year and just move forward,” Seville said. “You cannot dwell on the past forever because the past is going to be past, so you just have to focus on the present.”

He emphasised that his background work in training has been on point, noting that he has been putting in a lot of effort in practice and is feeling good about the strides he has been making.

“Mentally, I will be okay because I have a strong team around me and my mental state is actually good because I can bounce back from this,” he said. “I have seen what happened and I know what to do to prevent it from happening again, so everything is going to be good next year.”

“Training has been good so far, and I am just taking it step by step each month, to see all the progress I can make,” Seville said.

Seville was recently named as one of the racers in the inaugural Grand Slam Track series, which kicks off in Kingston at the National Stadium April 4-6. The series also has stops in Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles.