Wilson tips Dwyer for possible podium
Published:Monday | July 12, 2021 | 12:07 AMRobert Bailey/Gleaner Writer
SprinTec Track Club head coach Maurice Wilson says he is taking a cautious approach to the preparation of national 200m champion Rasheed Dwyer for the Olympic Games later this month.
Wilson told The Gleaner that Dwyer has been battling injuries this year and says his performance at the National Senior Championships (Trials) recently is an indication that he is still among the world’s best in the event.
“I think so far we have been making some progress,” Wilson said. “Rasheed has always had some issues based on how he walks and his posture. He has deep problems with his back, so we have to be careful with how we prepare him.
“What has been happening over the years is that after the Trials, normally he goes to Europe and he is there on his own. I am not there with him and sometimes he reinjures himself, so where we are now is that he is under my supervision, and I do believe that this might be one of the better periods of preparation for him.”
Dwyer, 32, is the 2014 Commonwealth Games 200m champion and has a personal best of 19.80 seconds in the event. His season’s best time of 20.17 seconds, which won him the National Championship, ranks him as the fastest Jamaican in the 200m this season.
Wilson says Dwyer has two warm-up races lined up in the United States before the Games. He is not ruling out a podium finish for Dwyer in Tokyo.
“I don’t know if a lot persons understand that he is one of the few athletes in Jamaica that would have run sub-20 seconds within 12 hours of each other when he ran 19.80s and 19.90s at the Pan American Games in 2015.
“I do believe that we can get him into the final, which I think is possible because I do believe that you are not going to have a lot of the sub-20 performances. Once you are in the final, anything is possible, as we would have seen at Trials.”