Bailey remains focused after Strasbourg win

STRASBOURG, France (CMC):

Antiguan sprint star Daniel Bailey has taken Monday's 100-metres triumph at the Meeting d'Athlétisme de Strasbourg in stride, and says he will return to training to continue working out the kinks in his technique.

The 24-year-old Bailey clocked 9.97 seconds to beat Racers Track Club training partner Yohan Blake of Jamaica who finished second in 9.98 seconds at the Stade de Hautepierre.

"The first part of my race and my transition phase were perfect," said Bailey, who missed out on the national record by 0.06 of a second.

"There is still room for improvement as basically, my stride length is a little bit too short."

"In Antigua, we also have (national) trials but it's low level compared to Jamaica, so I'm going back to training and don't know yet where and when I'm running next."

Britain's Dwain Chambers was out of the blocks first but had been overtaken by St Kitts and Nevis' Kim Collins after 30 metres.

After Collins pulled up, Bailey, Chambers and Blake matched strides for the last 20 metres before Bailey leaned in to hit the line first.

Bailey, his country's most familiar track-and-field personality, described his last three weeks on the European circuit as a learning curve.

"Here I learned how to acclimatise and cope with different eating habits," he noted.

Blake, who clocked 9.98 seconds, said his focus was now Jamaica's national championships later this month.

preparation mode

"I will now eat right and get prepared. I have enough time before the trials to fix the poor start (I had Monday)," The 21-year-old explained.

"I think I just lost focus because my training before the race has been perfect."

The training partners have met each other in 100 metres 12 times with Bailey winning six, Blake taking five and one contest finishing in a tie.

Bailey was quick to downplay their latest clash.

"He is stronger, I'm quicker. It's really not a problem to race against a training partner," he said.

"We know that these competitions are also part of the training. We don't worry about that, we stay cool and just think about execution."