Big shoes to fill

A BREAKOUT season for Shanoya Douglas in the 200 metres this season culminates at the World Under-20 Championships in Lima, Peru, next week.

Should Muschett High School athlete’s season end with a win in the half-lap event, it would mean that the country has back-to-back gold medals following on Brianna Lyston’s success two years ago in Cali, Colombia.

Victory would also make her the fourth Jamaican woman to win the event, following successes by Veronica Campbell-Brown in 2000 in Santiago, Chile, and Briana Williams in 2018 in Tampere, Finland.

It has been a near flawless season for Douglas in the half-lap event this season, her only defeat coming in very cold and rainy conditions at the Puma East Invitational High School Showcase in Maryland. She finished third behind Skyler Franklin but returned at the National Championships to score a resounding win over Franklin, producing a personal best 22.59 seconds.

Her time at the national championships has her at the top of the pack heading to Peru and will give her a lot of confidence.

However, Douglas isn’t expected to have it all her own way, with the British Virgin Islands’ Adaejah Hodge and Elise Cooper of the United States to contend with.

Hodge, the 2022 Austin Sealy Award winner at the Carifta Games in the Bahamas, is coming straight from the Olympic Games in Paris, where she finished eighth in the semi-finals with 22.70 seconds. She has a season’s best of 22.66 seconds done last month in Gainesville, Florida.

Cooper, with a season’s best 22.71 seconds should not be taken lightly either, but if Douglas can repeat her national championships form, she could take home the biggest prize of her junior career to date.