Quick Brussels track could get Jackson closer to World Record

WHEN TWO-TIME World Champion Shericka Jackson lines up tomorrow at the Brussels Diamond League meet, she will have history pushing her along and history facing her like a brick wall.

On one hand, Jamaicans have excelled in the 200 metres in the Belgian capital in the past. On the other hand, history says that the best times in the 200 are almost exclusively produced in global or national championships.

The 29-year-old Jamaican faces two World Championship 200 metres finalists: her MVP Track Club training partner Anthonique Strachan of the Bahamas and Britain’s Darryl Neita. Given her sensational run at the Budapest World Championships, there are some who hope for a world record.

On the positive side, the wide-sweeping curves make running turns a delight in Brussels. The peerless Merlene Ottey screamed to a national record 21.64 seconds at this venue in 1991.

The time stood as the best ever by a Jamaican for 30 years.

Twenty years later, Yohan Blake scared Usain Bolt’s world record with a brilliant time of 19.26 seconds in that same venue.

So very fast times are there for the taking.

Flip the page and you’ll see history wagging a disparaging finger at you.

Nine of the 10 fastest 200 metres times ever run have come in the Olympic Games, the Worlds, or at national championships. The odd one out is a 21.62-second blast by Marion Jones in the speed-friendly altitude of Johannesburg, South Africa.

In fact, Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record – 21.34 seconds – came in the 1988 Olympic final. The second and third fastest times, 21.41 in Budapest and 21.45 last year in the Eugene World Championship final by Jackson come ahead of a 21.53 by Elaine Thompson Herah in the 2021 Olympic final.

NO MATCH

Here’s my theory. Championships and trial meets bring the best together when everyone is in peak condition. The cocktail produces excellence that one-off meets generally can’t match.

To make a real run at the record, Jackson will have to do it alone on Friday as the Budapest silver and bronze medallists Gabrielle Thomas and Sha’Carri Richardson are absent. Presumably, they are resting for the Diamond League final, which is in Eugene on September 16 and 17.

In the meantime, we should give credit to Jackson and the MVP track club. Since her move into the 100 and 200, she has improved her lifetime best for both events three years in a row. In the longer event, she ran 22.05 seconds in 2018, a few months after her silver medal run at the Commonwealth Games, behind Bahamian star Shaunae Miller-Uibo. Since then, she moved to 21.81 in 2021, 21.45 in 2022, and now 21.41.

It would be great if those sweeping turns slingshot Shericka past the 35-year-old world record on Friday in Brussels.

If not, I feel sure that another season of refining her technique will make a new 200 metres record possible next year, maybe in the Paris Olympic final.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at track side since 1980.