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MVP Track Club to assess Elaine Thompson injuries

Published:Tuesday | October 1, 2019 | 5:44 PMRachid Parchment - Assistant Sports Editor -
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Jamaica's Elaine Thompson (centre) finishes in fourth with a time of 10.93 seconds during the Women's 100m final at the IAAF World Championships at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar on Sunday. The race was won by Thompson's MVP Track Club teammate Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce (left) in 10.71 seconds.
Gladstone Taylor
Jamaica's Elaine Thompson (centre) finishes in fourth with a time of 10.93 seconds during the Women's 100m final at the IAAF World Championships at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar on Sunday. The race was won by Thompson's MVP Track Club teammate Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce (left) in 10.71 seconds.
Francis
Ricardo Makyn
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MVP Track Club coach Stephen Francis says that his athlete, Elaine Thompson, is not suffering from an Achilles injury as is being reported.

The reigning double Olympic champion finished fourth in the final of the women's 100m at the IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday, leading to speculation by pundits and athletics fans that she was carrying an injury. She returned on Monday for the women's 200m heats and ran a time of 22.61 seconds to advance to Tuesday's semi-final in second place. She then pulled out of that round moments before it started on Tuesday afternoon.

"It's not an Achilles injury," Francis told The Gleaner. "Her Achilles gets tight because of something else elsewhere. She has tight muscles elsewhere on her body, which pulls on her tendons."

He said that her discomfort at the World Championships started on Sunday.

"She couldn't run," he said. "It started sometime during the 100m semi-finals, and she tried to go yesterday (Monday). It got a little worse today (Tuesday). She warmed up and couldn't go. So we have to now turn our attention to trying and seeing if we can get it fixed."

Francis has ruled Thompson out of the women's 4x100m relay event, which starts with heats on Friday, saying he doubts that she will run again at these championships. He said that he and his medical staff at MVP will now be looking for a solution that prevents a recurrence of injury worries for the 27-year-old but that this does not necessarily mean Thompson will do surgery.

"The process of trying to treat it makes her not very good, in terms of her explosiveness, so it didn't work out," Francis said. "Hopefully, we can come to a solution and see if there is a permanent fix. I doubt that a surgery will be involved because she has not had a ruptured tendon or anything like that. She has extremely tight calves, which put her lower feet under pressure. So we have to find a methodology to deal with that issue so that she can prepare and race properly."

Thompson also ended her 2018 season prematurely because of injuries.