Wilson dreams of Olympic medal

Sprintec Track Club head coach Maurice Wilson’s biggest dream is for one of his charges to get an individual Olympic medal and is confident that it will be realised at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

Wilson’s club is based at the GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sport, in Spanish Town, St Catherine, where he is the acting principal and has been coaching for over 30 years.

The likes of Rasheed Dwyer, Anastasia Le-Roy, Natasha Morrison, Yanique Thompson, Ronda Whyte, Shashalee Forbes and Demish Gaye are all under Wilson’s tutelage at Sprintec. Wilson examined these athletes prospects as they gear up for next summer’s Olympics.

“Rasheed has won individual medals at all major championships except the Olympic Games, and he is the fourth fastest Jamaican male over 200m behind Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, and Warren Weir; while Le-Roy has been on every 4x400m senior relay time since 2007, except one Olympic team,” Wilson told The Gleaner.

He spoke glowingly about Thompson, Morrison, Whyte and Gaye.

“I think Thompson is one of the best sprint hurdlers in the country, but a nagging knee injury has derailed her progress,” he said. “Morrison is a potential top three or four 100m individual finisher any time at our trials. Whyte only needs some self-confidence to step up at the international level, while Gaye is the best quarter miler in the country, presently.”

Wilson thinks Gaye could be his first athlete to get a medal at the Olympic Games, following his fourth-place finish at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar in the one lap event in October.

Right attributes

“Demish has all the attributes to be an Olympic Games individual medallist, I believe he is the best quarter miler currently in the country,” he said. “He is constantly dropping his times and the difference between himself and the other athletes in the club is his professionalism. Apart from his talent he knows how to prepare, and this has contributed to his success so far. It doesn’t matter which lane he runs out of, he always gives of his best and getting a silver medal at PanAm Games out of lane eight has given him a lot of confidence “

Wilson also assessed some of his athletes’ sub par performances in Doha.

“As a coach, my key to success is preparation, but somehow, we had some issues in the past year,” he said. “Unlike 2017 when we had a month-long training camp in Europe, this time around we only had two weeks as there was little or no international races for the athletes after the conclusion of the [national] Trials. The three months period of relative inactivity affected their performances, especially someone like Gaye, whom I think could have gone sub 44 seconds with much more international competition under his belt.”