Bolt leads besieged Jamaicans
KINGSTON: Olympic champions Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce headline a Jamaican world athletics championships squad that will come under intense scrutiny in Moscow following several positive doping tests by some of the country’s athletes.
Five athletes, including Olympic gold medallists Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, tested positive for banned substances at the Caribbean island’s national championships in June and face disciplinary hearings. All five have denied knowingly taking banned substances.
Neither Powell nor Simpson, both of whom tested positive for the stimulant oxilophrine, were included in the squad named by the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) on Monday for the Aug 10-18 championships.
Nine-time world championships medallist Veronica Campbell-Brown, who held a wildcard entry to Moscow by virtue of winning the 200m in Daegu, South Korea in 2011, also missed out.
Campbell-Brown is provisionally suspended after failing a test for using a banned diuretic at May’s Jamaica International Invitational World Challenge.
Powell had finished seventh in the 100m at the national championships but had been expected to be included in the 4x100m relay team having run 9.8sec at the Lausanne Diamond League meeting on July 4.
Jamaican officials did not indicate what event the athletes were likely to run in Moscow but Nesta Carter is expected to join Bolt, Nickel Ashmeade and Kemar Bailey-Cole in the 100m in the absence of injured world champion Yohan Blake.
The 22-member male squad also includes Olympic 200m bronze medallist Warren Weir.
Former Commonwealth Games champion Sherri-Ann Brooks, who was fourth at the Jamaican trials in June, is expected to take the place of Simpson in the women’s 100m.
Wildcard holder and 2009 world champion Fraser-Pryce, Kerron Stewart and Schillonie Calvert will be the other entrants in the blue riband event.