Briana can go faster – coach
Published:Wednesday | February 9, 2022 | 12:11 AMHubert Lawrence/Gleaner Writer
OLYMPIC RELAY gold medallist Briana Williams impressed everyone with her 60-metre personal best of 7.09 seconds on Sunday. Among the impressed is her coach, 1997 World 200 champion Ato Boldon, who nevertheless says his 19-year-old sprint student can do better.
Asked for a reaction a day after the New Balance Grand Prix where Williams later ran 7.11 seconds in the final behind American Mikiah Brisco, Boldon replied, “Very happy but Briana is capable of running a lot faster.”
The 7.09 makes Williams the third fastest woman over the distance in 2022 and levels her with 1992 Olympic 100/200 runner-up Juliet Cuthbert at number 7 on the all-time Jamaican performance list.
Williams matched her former best of 7.18 seconds on January 14. After that, Boldon challenged her to go into the low 7.1 range if she wanted a spot on the Jamaican team to the World Indoor Championships. After her New Balance exploits, he chuckled, “How am I going to tell her we can’t go to World Indoors? She’s in the top two Jamaicans. We’re not saying two Jamaicans aren’t going to run faster than 7.09 but as long as she’s in the top two Jamaicans.”
His analysis of the New Balance final is telling.
“She should have won the final and I still say that her start is not quite there yet but this is the life of a coach, huh? One thing is going well, like her knee lift and her relaxation mid-race looks better than it ever has, but all of a sudden, her start, reaction to the gun is not what it usually is and quite frankly, I’m like, you and I are going to have to do a whole practice just on how you lean and how you approach the finish line,” Boldon detailed.
He noted that as a champion high school athlete, the 2018 World Under-20 100 and 200-metre champion never had to lean.
“Remember, she did not run a lot of high school meets and she never went to university [to compete] so things that I assume of a 19-year-old, I go, ‘wait a minute, she was with me and we didn’t necessarily do that because she was blowing people away by 30 metres,” he recalled.
For emphasis, he asked rhetorically, “Where would Briana learn to lean as a junior?”
If she does reach Belgrade, the Serbian capital that will host the World Indoors in March, she will be racing to extend Jamaica’s fine history in the 60.
Merlene Ottey, the first woman in history to break seven seconds, Veronica Campbell-Brown and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce have all won the World Indoor gold medal with successes in 1995 for Ottey, in 2010 and 2012 for VCB and in 2014 for Fraser-Pryce.
When Ottey dashed 6.96 seconds in 1992, it was a world record. Though 30 years have passed, it is still the fastest time ever by a Jamaican.