Shericka Jackson, a renowned Jamaican runner, was dominating a women’s 200-metre race in Hungary when she abruptly suffered an injury. The event served as a practice run for the coming Olympics.
With women’s 100 and 200m Olympic gold medallist Elaine Thompson-Herah having previously withdrawn from the Games due to an injury, Jackson’s presumed ailment represents the latest blow to the Jamaican team. It’s still unclear how exactly Jackson might have been injured.
Jackson’s race performance
With about 50 metres left in the race, Jackson started to limp, but she managed to cross the finish line on her own. Due to this unexpected turn of events, Julien Alfred of St. Lucia finished first in the end, clocking a season-best time of 22.16 seconds to wrap up the competition. Lanae-Tava Thomas, a sprinter, finished third.
In the 400-metre competition at the Rio 2016 Olympics, Jackson took home a bronze medal. At the Tokyo Olympics, she went on to win gold in the 4×100-metre relay. The athlete is expected to be the greatest threat to American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson in the 100-metre event if she is well enough to run in Paris.
Following her 10.71-second finish in the women’s 100-metre race last month, Richardson will make her Olympic debut.
Can Jamaica win the women’s 4×100 metres relay at the Paris Olympics like they did at Tokyo 2020? The small Caribbean island nation’s track and field community is talking about the state of play after mishaps suffered by two of their leading sprinters.
Elaine Thompson-Herah, the reigning 100 and 200 metres Olympic champion who was part of the gold-winning Tokyo relay team, won’t be going to Paris. She didn’t take part in the Jamaican Olympic trials after an Achilles injury at the New York Grand Prix in June.
The world 200 metres champion Shericka Jackson, who was also on the Tokyo Olympic-winning relay team, suffered a mishap too.
She limped out of a race recently.
Jackson pulled up with an apparent injury late in a race on July 9 during the Hungarian Athletics Grand Prix.
She was in front and nearing the finish line when she suddenly pulled up in apparent pain. She seemed to be in discomfort as she walked off the track.
Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia won the race.
Jackson’s condition and the likely consequences for the Jamaican Olympic squad have become a matter of intense speculation.
Ready Set Go
American Justin Gatlin, the 2004 Olympics 100 metres champion, and track and field coach Rodney Green from the Bahamas discussed Jackson and Jamaica on their podcast, Ready Set Go.
Recalling how Jackson pulled up in pain in Hungary, Rodney Green asked, “Do we think it’s a cramp? How serious is It do we think it is?”
Justin Gatlin replied: “I dealt with that in 2016. I had a hamstring injury maybe about three weeks before the trial and it was more than a cramp.”
A condition like that requires daily, round-the-clock therapy, he said.
Jackson isn’t going to lose fitness because she is in incredible shape. But she needs to rest so “that when she gets out there, she’s going to be ready to run once again, but she got to make sure that hamstring is able to hold up.” “If she’s going for tall orders, if she’s going out to try to get Olympic gold or even try to break or threaten the world record once again, [then] she needs that hamstring to be 100% [fit],” he added.
She needs to be mentally ready to take on the challenge, said Green.
‘Pressure on Shericka’
Gatlin said, “Watching her in the documentary, I saw the pressure on her.” He added, “I think the pressure on her not only within her camp but also the country of Jamaica like she’s the next generation that’s coming, like she’s the leader, and that’s what they’re gonna put her as that, in that Sprint show, that’s what I saw. I saw a young woman who love what she do, but she felt uncomfortable with those pressures.”
Green said,”Yeah. But she got a good group coming up behind her with Tia Clayton, she got Atlanta Reed.”
However, he added, “I don’t know how that works out with America cause America right now is spinning on all cylinders. Y’all think how they gonna fare against USA without Shericka if she is injured?”
He referred to America’s formidable pool of athletes including Sha’Carri Richardson, Gabby Thomas, Melissa Jefferson, TT Terry, Tamari Davis, Jenna Prandini
Gatlin said: “I think it’s gonna be tough for them [Jamaicans] to even podium. You gotta look at other countries like Great Britain… they got a good squad of ladies who matured and started working together, they gonna be ready to go on and get on that podium again. So I think it’s gonna be a tall order for the ladies over in Jamaica if they definitely lose Elaine, if they also lose Shericka. That’s gonna be a tough battle.”
Shericka Jackson pulls out of 100m to ‘protect my body’, she will focus on 200m in Paris Olympics
Jamaican track star Shericka Jackson won’t be chasing a sprint double at the Paris Olympics. She dropped out of the 100 metres on Wednesday, saying, “The decision is just to protect my body.”
She will focus instead on the 200 metres in which she is the current world champion, having won the event in Eugene, USA, in 2022 and Budapest, Hungary, in 2023.
Jackson explained she dropped out of the 100 metres because of an injury she suffered at a race earlier this month.
‘I got hurt’ in Hungary race, she says
In Jackson’s final pre-Olympics race in Hungary, she pulled up with a calf cramp and limped off the track.
“I got hurt, and me and my coach felt like it was a good decision to only run one event,” she told reporters.
Earlier this week, Jackson’s coach, Stephen Francis, told the Jamaica Gleaner website that Jackson “appears OK to me”.
Jackson, however, described the decision to pull out as coming from both herself and Francis.
Shericka Jackson, ranked number two in the world for 100 metres, has pulled out of the 100m less than two days before the heats start.
Jackson said she would still run the 200 metres, where she is the only woman other than the world-record holder, the late Florence Griffith Joyner, to finish in under 21.5 seconds.
In Jackson’s absence, American world champion Sha’Carri Richardson, who holds the world-leading time of 10.71 seconds this year, will start as the favourite for the 100-metre gold medal.
Elaine Thompson-Herah, who won the sprint double at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and again in Tokyo, will not defend her titles. She dropped out of the Jamaican trials last month with an Achilles injury.
Jackson had been considered a top contender in the 100 metres after winning bronze in the event at the Tokyo Games and finishing second at each of the past two world championships.
Olympic debutant Tia Clayton and two-time Olympic 100-metre champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will carry Jamaica’s best medal hopes in the event.
Pryce-Jones, 37, won gold in the 100 metres in Beijing (2008) and London (2012).
Richardson favourite in 100m
However, Richardson is the current favourite. She won the event in her first world championships last summer.
The Jamaicans won all three medals in the 100 metres in Tokyo with Thompson -Herah winning gold, Pryce-Jones silver, and Jackson bronze. Only Pryce-Jones will be competing in the event in Paris.
Jamaica track and field team manager Ludlow Watts said Shashalee Forbes would replace Jackson in the 100 metres. Forbes was fourth in the 100 in 11.04 seconds at the Jamaican trials.
The preliminary rounds of the women’s 100 begin Friday. The final is set for Saturday.
Shericka Jackson and Gabrielle Thomas, two of the world’s fastest women over the 200 metres, will be vying for their first individual Olympic gold at the Paris Games.
Jackson was part of the Jamaican quartet that won the 4×100 metres gold in Tokyo three years ago, but her individual best is a 100-metre bronze from Tokyo.
Thomas was one of the American foursome that claimed the 4×100 metres silver in Tokyo. Her individual best is a 200-metre silver from Tokyo, where she was beaten to the gold by the Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah.
Thompson-Herah, who did a treble in Tokyo, winning the 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4×100 metre relay, is not competing in Paris because of an Achilles tendon injury.
Despite her absence, the Paris 200 metres will see a formidable field.
Shericka Jackson
Jackson, the reigning 200-metre world champion, won the event at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in 21.41 seconds. Only one woman has run the 200 metres faster – the late Florence Griffith-Joyner of the United States, who clocked 21.34 seconds, a world record to this day.
While Jackson’s is the second fastest 200-metre run by a woman, Thomas ran pretty close too. She ran the distance in 21.60 seconds – the fourth fastest time — in Eugene, United States, in September 2023.
Jackson came to Paris to run in the 100 metres as well as the 200 metres, but she pulled out of the 100 metres recently, citing an injury she suffered in a race in Hungary in July. She said she had to “protect my body”. She decided to focus on the 200 metres instead, in which she won the World Championships in 2022 and 2023.
Gabrielle Thomas
Thomas is also hoping for gold.
“When I came back from the Tokyo Olympics with a bronze medal and a silver, I was very happy with that,” she said in an interview with Sky Sport.
“I would have been happy ending my career there. It’s really all the outward talk and chatter that you hear that makes you want that gold medal. You’re like, ‘Dang, well I really got to go get that!’ But it wasn’t about that for me. It was about the fact that I put on a performance that I was proud of, and that was my best season to date. If I can go and replicate that in Paris, I’ll be really happy. Hopefully, that ends up with a gold medal.”
The 200 metres will be more than a two-horse race.
Jackson and Thomas will have to contend with other famous sprinters, such as Dina Asher-Smith, Great Britain’s 2019 world 200-metre champion, and Cote d’Ivoire legend Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith. The African star finished among the top five in the sprint double at the last two Games. The reigning world indoor 60-metre champion Julien Alfred will also be in the running. She will be raring to bring home the first Olympic medal to St Lucia.
A parting factoid for the fans: There have been only three repeat winners in the history of the women’s 200 metres at the Olympics. Elaine Thompson-Herah was the last. The 200-metre gold medallist in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the Tokyo Olympics three years ago is missing the action through injury.
Despite setbacks in the past, Shericka Jackson, one of Jamaica’s most promising athletes, qualified for her third Olympics in Paris. She suffered a severe mental collapse after she failed to qualify for the 200-metre sprint at the Olympics in Tokyo.
In the recently released docuseries Sprint on Netflix, Jackson opens up about her inner struggles. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Jackson won two medals: one in the 400-metre sprint and another as a member of the 4×400-metre relay team.
She was the centre of attention in Tokyo and lived up to the hype, winning bronze in the 100-metre finals with teammates Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah.
“During the Olympic Games…Jamaica had anticipated that I would take home a gold medal. But I was very anxious. Additionally, I made a careless error,” Jackson was quoted as saying by sportsrush.
Jackson’s world completely collapsed after her heat elimination, igniting a wave of vitriol on social media and other platforms. She was formerly hailed as a celebrity. Looking back on the experience, she remembers it was a really difficult time to go through.
“I was so traumatized by the Olympics that I suffered a mental collapse.”
Jackson and Sha’Carri Richardson fighting it out.
The women’s 100 and 200-metre sprints at the 2023 World Championships attracted a lot of attention due to the exciting match between Shericka Jackson and Sha’Carri Richardson.
The race was exciting and hotly contested, with the highlight occurring during the 100-metre finals, where Jackson finished second with an astounding 10.72 seconds, and Richardson led the field with an incredible 10.65 seconds.
There was a lot of excitement for the 200 metres, as Jackson dominated the final, taking first place in an incredible 21.41 seconds. Richardson came in third with 21.92 seconds. Jackson’s triumph not only demonstrated her skill but also gave her supporters newfound faith in her 200-metre performance.
Shericka Jackson wins women’s 200m in Zurich Diamond League 2023
On Thursday, Aug 31, Shericka Jackson, 29, secured another resounding 200m victory in the 2023 Zurich Diamond in Switzerland.
Jackson showed off her unrivaled speed at the beginning of the race and continued to lead the Swiss track until the end. The Jamaican sprinter clocked a time of 21.82 seconds when she finished the 200 m event, leaving behind second and third placers Daryll Neita with 22.25 seconds and Kayla White with 22.33 seconds, respectively.
Although Jackson did not beat the 1988 world record of Florence Griffith Joyner in the 200 meters, she was able to come close with her recent record at the World Athletics Championships 2023 last week. She was also the first-place finisher in the 200 meters event, with a time of 21.41 seconds, which was just 0.07 seconds shy of the world record.
In a post-race interview, Jackson shared her thoughts as to how she felt about her 21.82 seconds record this time:
“I’m feeling good, and not even a week since the (World Athletics) Championship finished and I’m here competing, so it was a good feeling just to be here competing, and I’m healthy, so it’s great.”
“This full house is wonderful. I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot. I wanted to come out here and perform,”, Jackson said.
Without a doubt, Jackson has certainly earned a place among the most decorated 200m racers of all time, having won five Olympic medals. However, she refuses to rest on her laurels just yet, as there are still two more races left in the season, including a final in Eugene. She also states that she’s not focusing on the Paris Olympics in 2024 yet and just wishes to finish the season well this year.
“To be honest, the season has not finished yet, so my focus is not yet on the Olympic Games, but on this 2023 season,” explained Jackson. “I just want to finish this season well.”
Jackson also thanked her fans in one interview, saying:
“I just want to say thank you, guys, and I do appreciate your support always.”
