Watson to open 2024 season at Camperdown Classics
WORLD 400 metres champion Antonio Watson is set to open his 2024 season at tomorrow’s 19th staging of the Camperdown Classics at the National Stadium. The meet starts at 9 a.m.
Watson heads a number of athletes from the Racers Track Club who will be in action at the meet, with the invitational 400m at 5:42 p.m. Great Britain’s Zharnel Hughes and Oblique Seville, who were third and fourth, respectively, in the 100m final in Budapest along with national junior 100m record holder Bouwahjgie Nkrumie and former Kingston College sprinter Jhevaughn Matherson are some of the other athletes from the club who are down to run at the meet.
Racers head coach Glen Mills said Watson is ready for the meet.
“He has been training very well and is in fantastic shape. I don’t know the conditions or the level of competition (at tomorrow’s meet), but if he has to run fast, he will,” Mills said.
World Championships 400m hurdles fourth-place finisher Roshawn Clarke, a former Camperdown High star, will also compete in the one-lap event for Swept Track Club. His Clarke’s clubmates, Emmanuel Archibald out of Guyana, Joseph Ramie of Great Britain, and Tyquendo Tracy, will also be in action.
With the World Indoor Championships set for early March in Glasgow, Scotland, athletes will get the chance to compete in the 60m. Tracy, Archibald, Javorne Dunkley, and Sandrey Davison of Elite Performance Track Club and Emre Barnes out of Turkey will headline the male participants in the short sprint.
One of the highlights of the meet should be the Class Four girls’ 100m. Following her excellent start to the season at the Pure Water/ JC/R. Danny Williams Development meet, where she clocked a fast 12.19 seconds, Ferncourt High’s Rihanna Scott will lead the charge here. Hydel High’s Teixiera Johnson, St Jago High’s ChelseaAnn Samuels, and Wolmer’s Girls’ Mick-Kayla Gardener are down to contest an event that will be a big test for Scott.
The Class One girls’ 100m is expected to be a wide -open affair at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’Athletics Championships this year, and season leader Alliah Baker of Hydel, with 11.59 seconds, will go up against St Jago’s Kryshell Hoolong and the Wolmer’s duo of Abigail Wolfe and Mickayla Gardener in the event.
Camperdown past students, Reggae Boy Damion Lowe and former national basketballer Mugabe Thomas, will be the honourees of the meet.