Fun starts early as Asafa Powell opts to race indoors
Posted By Joe on December 13, 2011
Grosremy/Dreamstime
Jamaica’s former World Record Holder Asafa Powell increased the anticipation ahead of the blue-riband event at this summer’s London Olympic Games, after announcing today that he will be competing indoors for the first time since 2004. Powell, who has run under 10 seconds for the 100m more times than any other man in history, will race at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix on February 18th before targeting the World Indoor Championship in March.
“My coach and I have been speaking about the ideal preparation for next year’s Olympics and we think doing an indoor season is the best move for me,” Powell said in a statement released today, “I love competing indoors and to get the opportunity to race in Birmingham is really exciting.
“The calibre of athletes there has always been strong and if I’m going to be challenging for medals, I need to be racing against the best opposition all the way up until the Olympics. It’s not long now until the Games so every minute counts.”
Powell could do with a little something extra going into the showpiece event at the Olympics. It has often been suggested that he ‘chokes’ in big finals; his record for the World and Olympic Games in the past show that a bronze in Osaka in 2007, and a bronze in Berlin in 2009 are the only medals Powell has won on the world stage, a sub-par return for a man who has run under 9.82 seconds every year since 2004, setting two world records in that time. He managed to win Commonwealth Games in 2006, his only gold medal in a global competition.
After running 9.78 seconds last season in Lausanne, Powell pulled out of the World Championships in Daegu a few days before they began, citing a groin injury. The 100m at those championships proved to be one of the most eventful as defending champion Usain Bolt was disqualified for a false start, leaving a third Jamaican, Yohan Blake, to take the gold medal.
Powell will certainly have to be at his best to beat his fellow countrymen. Todays announcement means that the fun will be starting early in an event in which anticipation was already heightened after an announcement from the Coach of both Bolt and Blake, Glen Mills, saying that his two stars could race each other sooner than expected this summer. The two will face off at the Jamaican trials in June, and then in London in August, all being well.
“That depends on the races that the managers have gotten confirmation for,” Mills told Reuters last week, “Track and field is not just a sport, it’s also a business…so it all depends on what meets are able to afford both runners to run in the same event.”
Blake’s agent, Cubie Seegobin, has already stated that his charge will line up against Bolt over either distance in the run up to the Olympic Games, great news for fans who may have been expecting to see the two race each other only twice next summer. It also tells us something about Blake’s state of mind; he is clearly a man who feels that he can outrun the seemingly unbeatable Bolt over either distance – no mean feat.
“It doesn’t matter, if we’re in the 200 and whoever lines up in the 200 and we are comfortable with our negotiations and conditions, whoever lines up lines up, it doesn’t matter to us,” Seegobin said, “And the same thing in the 100, whoever lines up 100, that’s as long as we comfortable with out conditions, it doesn’t matter to us.”
For his part, Bolt is similarly confident, and reminded the world as much last week, a few days after former 100m World Record holder Maurice Greene cast doubt over Bolt’s ability to beat Blake at next summer’s games. Greene suggested that if the two ran to form, it would be the younger man who triumphed.
“If everybody competes like they did this year, I’d say Yohan Blake is going to win,” the American told BBC Radio. But Bolt, who didn’t have a stellar year last year, believes that he will still be the man to beat come August.
“A lot of people have said guys are going to beat me but I am still number one. I am still the Olympic champion,” the world’s fastest man told on Saturday. “It doesn’t really matter what people say. I go out there and prove them wrong everyday. That’s just one more challenge, and I enjoy challenges.”
If Bolt gets back to the form which saw him win in Beijing in 2008 and in Berlin in 2009, it will take a monumental effort from Powell, Blake, and the returning American Tyson Gay, absent in 2011 through injury, to stop him, a point not lost on the man himself.
“It would be very important, even wonderful if I could get my records at the Games,” Bolt told Reuters, “I really want to do that because that allows me to wow the crowd…but you never know what the weather is going to be.”
Bolt told Runner’s World this week that “Good weather in London in August” is on his Christmas list, for precisely this reason. With all the big hitters stepping up their game in the lead up to the most anticipated event of the London Games, keep your fingers crossed. It could be very special.
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