Nesta’s rage
BEIJING, China — Despite striking gold in the 4x100m relay, Nesta Carter could not contain his anger at the JAAA for what he claimed was their poor handling of an administrative matter that may have rendered him ineligible to defend his World Championships 100m bronze medal won in Moscow two years ago.
Carter, who finished fourth at Jamaica’s National Senior Championships in June and was named in the 4x100m relay pool, was drafted to replace an injured Kemar Bailey-Cole for the 100m event, but he was not named in the reserves and was ruled ineligible by the world governing body, the IAAF.
Carter, 29, who now has five relay gold medals dating back to 2008, said the JAAA had blundered in its handling of the issue.
“I have been doing this a number of years for my country and I wanted to defend my third place from Moscow and to leave off a medallist from the last World Championships is a big disrespect,” said Carter, who led off Jamaica’s successful defence of their 4x100m crown.
“They have rules that state the first two is guaranteed, third and fourth have to wait and prove fitness leading up to the championship. None of these rules were put into place for this championship,” he argued
“The fact that you train an entire year and your federation that is supposed to be taking care of you, not doing anything like that. It’s not something that I am happy about. It cost a lot to train for one year,” said the MVP athlete.
Carter, who has a best time of 9.78 seconds set in 2010, became the fifth sprinter to run 100m in less than 9.80, and is currently the sixth fastest man of all time behind Usain Bolt (9.58), Yohan Blake (9.69), Tyson Gay (9.69), Asafa Powell (9.72) and Justin Gatlin (9.74).
“So the fact that I am here sitting and watching the Championships and you saw the relay to see the type of shape I am in to run in the 100m, which didn’t happen,” he reiterated.
“I am not pleased about it. I am very diappointed about it and none of the persons in charge, is only coach Wilson (Maurice), said something. None called me and said anything about it,” he lamented.
But despite his major disappointment, Carter dragged on the black, gold and green of his country and represented Jamaica to the best of his ability in the relay.
“I still have a job at hand to do. You can’t really dwell on the past because there is nothing I can do to change me running,” he noted.
“So I just had to move on and we had the relay to come out here and run and it’s a team sport, so I stayed focused, still train everyday,” Carter added.
But Carter, who is from Banana Ground in Manchester, the same place where 200m-silver medallist Elaine Thompson is from, said he has learnt from his mistakes and will be making sure he secures one of the automatic individual spots for the Olympic Games slated for Rio De Janeiro in Brazil next year.
“This pushes me to work really harder and next time not in the mix where the federation won’t have my back, I can actually say I made the team,” Carter ended.