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Shericka Jackson takes aim at World Record in Brussels

Published:Thursday | September 7, 2023 | 2:10 PM
Jamaica's Shericka Jackson watches the clock as she comes through the tape in the 200 metres final at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary last month. Following her home is the United States' Gabby Thomas (left) and St Lucia's Julien Alfr
Gladstone Taylor
Jamaica's Shericka Jackson watches the clock as she comes through the tape in the 200 metres final at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary last month. Following her home is the United States' Gabby Thomas (left) and St Lucia's Julien Alfred (right).

Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson says she will be taking aim at the 200 metres world record in Brussels, Belgium where the penultimate Diamond League event is set to take place tomorrow.

While many are at the ‘Last Chance Saloon’, battling for places in the Diamond League final in Eugene, Jackson, who has already qualified, can just focus on going as fast as she can.

Having run 21.41 seconds to break her own World Athletics Championships record in Budapest, Hungary last month, Jackson believes the 21.34 set by Florence Griffiths-Joyner at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, is there for the taking.

“At the World Championships I was so close. Just a little wind and I would have been the world record holder,” Jackson told a press conference in Brussels earlier today.

The result, a four-hundredth of a second improvement on her previous personal best, achieved at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon last year, has convinced Jackson and her coach, Paul Francis, to make an honest bid of breaking the world mark this year.

‘This year’ means two races, tomorrow in Brussels and in Eugene from September 16.17.

“Coach and I have spoken and I think we are going after it this year and I hope to get it tomorrow,” said Jackson.

To go that eight hundredth of a second faster, Jackson is banking on the unison of mind and body, to complete the near-perfect race she has to put together in Brussels.

“My body is feeling good, my mind is ready and that’s the best thing I can put together, my mind and my body. Anything is possible tomorrow.”

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