Adelle Tracey right on time for World Championships
EUGENE, Oregon — Adelle Tracey was so new to the Jamaican track and field scene that she was introduced as a “guest runner” at the recent Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) National Championships even as she won the 1500m.
The 29-year-old daughter of former Jamaica College quarter-miler Nicholas Tracey was only cleared to represent Jamaica on June 27, a day after the four-day championships, but she is hoping she will be better known as she swaps the Union Jack for the Jamaican black, green and gold.
Tracey will run the 800m/1500m for Jamaica at the World Championships set to get underway on Friday, and hopefully at next month’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham as well.
She was one of at least two athletes who competed at the national championships while in the process of switching allegiance but Adelle’s love for running, she told the Jamaica Observer on Monday, began while she was growing up in rural Manchester and came also from watching her father compete.
“I grew up in Manchester; those were my first memories of running. And the very rich history of running in Jamaica was one of the reasons I got involved in the sport,” she shared with the Observer after a training session at Churchill High School in Eugene, Oregon, on Monday.
Perhaps trying to stay in her father’s footsteps, Adelle started out as a 400m/800m runner but said her winter training during which she ran cross-country and longer distances prompted her coaches to suggest that she step up in distances to the 800m/1500m.
“Over the last few years I have felt stronger and my coaches said ‘Lets give the 1500m a go’, and so this is my first year where I am really focused on the 1500m as my major event as I have always competed in the 800m.”
Tracey, who will accompany Natoya Goule and Chriss Ann Gordon Powell in the 800m here in Eugene, was fourth in the European Championships in 2018 and was the British indoors champion in the 800m in 2016 and in the 1500m this year.
Her personal best in the events are 1:59.50 minutes in the 800m, set last year, and 4:02.55 in the 1500m, set this year in the Czech Republic.
If there was one positive from the novel coronavirus pandemic it was that it allowed for a break in international competition as Adelle, who had competed for Great Britain since age 16, said: “This is also the first time I got the opportunity to make the switch to Jamaica as I was always making the UK team.”
The decision, she said, was not new in that she grew up cheering for Jamaican athletes at the World Championships and the Olympic Games.
“As a child, when I used to watch track and field I always watched the Jamaicans. My mother is British, and so when I moved there I went through the system there and made my first team at age 16 and so I got a really nice opportunity to represent the other side of my heritage.”
Sprinters Merlene Ottey and Veronica Campbell Brown, she noted, were among her favourite Jamaican athletes. “There are so many athletes who have built a great legacy of athletics in Jamaica — why would you not want to be a part of that?”
For the present, however, Tracey said she was “really excited to be representing Jamaica and being on the world stage. And I feel like there is a lot of depth in the middle distances now and if I can make it to the finals, anything can happen”.