Mills: No pressure on Seville

With just under two weeks to go before the start of the National Championships, Glen Mills, coach of Jamaica’s top sprinter Oblique Seville, says his charge remains very calm and focused as he bids to secure a spot on this year’s World Championships team.

Seville is the joint second fastest man in the world this year after he clocked a personal best time of 9.86 seconds to win the men’s 100m at the JAAA/SDF Jubilee Series at the National Stadium on May 21. Twenty-year-old American Micah Williams has also clocked 9.86 this year.

Only Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya, who clocked 9.85 seconds in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 7, has run faster than Seville and Williams this year.

Mills told The Gleaner that the 21-year-old Seville is not getting carried away by his recent performance and, therefore, he continues to work very hard in training in his quest to make Jamaica’s World Championships team this year.

“There is no pressure on him because the objective is the same. Trying to make the team to the World Championships, and that was his objective from the beginning of the season,” said Mills.

“He made the Olympic team the last time, and so it is only natural that he would look forward to continuing making national teams – all being well,” he said.

“He hasn’t changed, and he has no reason to because the time is what it is. It is not like he won the World Championships gold medal or the Olympics. It is that he just ran a fast time, and that’s it,” Mills stated.

However, since his personal best effort on May 21, Seville, a former Holmwood Technical and Calabar standout, has not competed since, and according to Mills, the plans were not for him to compete on the Diamond League circuit before the National Trials.

“There were never any plans to send him abroad before the Trials. His performance, the 9.86, was just a part of the course, and so there were never any plans to send him overseas whether he ran fast or not,” Mills said.

“My expectation is simple. I am expecting him to make the team, and so far, he is in the top three Jamaican times, so we are hoping that he can maintain it at the Trials and make the team,” said the veteran coach.

Ackeem Blake, 9.95, is the only other Jamaican who has gone under 10 seconds for the 100m this year.

The National Championships will be at the National Stadium, June 23-26. It will be used to select Jamaica’s teams to this year’s World Championships, which will be held in Eugene, Oregon, July 15-24, and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, July 28 to August 8.