Sinclair prepared to run despite injury worries
LONDON, England — Despite what she calls a “whole bunch of injuries, one leading to the next”, Jamaica’s Kenia Sinclair says she will put them out of her mind when the women’s 800m starts tomorrow morning at Olympic Stadium, Stratford, London.
Sinclair told the Jamaica Observer yesterday she was “mentally” ready to go, but admitted that physically she was “not where she would have liked to be right now”.
She is just one of several injury worries in the Jamaican camp and the only one that has been declared to the media prior to competition.
Yesterday, minutes before the start of the women’s 100m hurdles, team officials told members of the media that Latoya Greaves would not be participating.
Two 400m runners — Jermaine Gonzales and Rushane McDonald — were badly hampered by injuries in their first-round heats and failed to advance, while sprinter Asafa Powell pulled up lame in the men’s 100m final on Sunday after aggravating a long-time groin injury.
Sinclair, the national record holder with one minute, 57.88 seconds, has been bothered by injuries all season and has a season-best two minutes, 01.55 seconds this season, the time she ran to win the title at the JAAA/Supreme Ventures National Trials in June.
Yesterday Sinclair, who was sixth in the women’s 800m final at the Beijing Olympics, told the Observer she was dealing with a bulging disc in her back, as well as lumbar problems among others, but said while this was “unfortunate”, she was still giving it a go.
Meanwhile, Ludlow Watts, team manager, told the Observer that Greaves had decided she would not be able to compete as far back as Saturday after she pulled up lame while warming up with a recurrence of an injury she sustained in training on July 26.
It was not certain how long she would be out of competition.
Powell, meanwhile, was due to undergo a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) yesterday, Watts said, to determine the extent of his injury.
Powell had told reporters on Sunday night that it was his groin that had flared up after he stumbled shortly after the start of the race.
