Frater’s Titans mission
HEAD COACH and founder of Titans International Track Club, Michael Frater, said he has been working to recover the careers and productivity of some of the island’s top male sprinters, including former world 100m champion Yohan Blake.
Frater has also been conditioning the likes of 2014 Commonwealth
Games 100m champion Kemar Bailey-Cole, the 2014 Olympic relay gold medallist Jevaughn Minzie, and former top junior sprinter Jazeel Murphy.
Frater told The Sunday Gleaner that Blake, who has suffered a series of injuries over past few years, has been moving nicely in training so far. The 2005 World Championships 100m silver medal winner shared that he has been paying particular attention to Blake’s conditioning, given his history of injuries.
“He (Blake) has been doing the work so far because he started training about a month ago,” said Frater. “Blake has always been out there putting in the work, but you just have to monitor him and make sure that he is doing the right things, and so far so good because he has been regaining his fitness.“The season is early and so there is no injury concerns, it is just about keeping him healthy and just strengthening the different areas that he has got weak in,” added Frater.
PODIUM FINISH
Blake has recorded personalbest times of 9.69 seconds in the 100m and 19.26 in the 200m, and according Frater, the main aim for the sprinter is to achieve a podium finish at next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
“Blake is an Olympic silver
medallist and fourth-place finisher, and so his goal is to be on the podium, and nothing less can be accepted other than a podium finish. That is what we are working towards,” said Frater.
Frater, who is one of Jamaica’s most successful sprinters, added that both Minzie and Bailey-Cole have shown solid improvements in training this season, and that he is expecting great things from the pair next season.
“Minzie has been coming on good because he has had some weight problems, and one of his issues was to lose some weight,” he said. “He has been losing the weight and he is starting to look like how he looked in 2016.” Minzie currently holds a personal-best time of 10.02
seconds in the 100m.
Meanwhile, the 28-year-old Bailey-Cole, who has a personalbest time of 9.92 seconds, is himself coming off a series of hamstring injuries which have kept him out of action for the past three seasons, but Frater is expecting him to return to full fitness next season.
“For Bailey-Cole, we have to be very strategic with him because of his injury problems, but we are working on strengthening the areas that have been causing him problems and we expect him to get better,” said Frater.
Titans is the acronym for Training Intelligently Towards Athletes’ Natural Speed.