Williams eager to get cracking in the 400m
PARIS, France — National quarter-miler Stacey Ann Williams, eager to represent Jamaica in her first individual event at the Olympic Games, is aiming to secure a podium finish for Jamaica in Paris.
Williams, who has had a good season, will enter the championships with a season’s best time of 50.56 seconds in the 400m. The 25-year-old, coached by Reynaldo Walcott at Elite Performance Track Club, is yet to break the 50-second barrier as she has a personal best time of 50.12.
But she will enter the Olympic Games high on confidence, after clocking 50.58 to defeat a strong field and win the women’s 400m at the Spitzen Leichtathletik meet in Luzern, Switzerland, earlier this month.
Williams told the Jamaica Observer she is ecstatic to be competing in her first Olympic Games and plans to do her very best to make it to the final of the event.
“Honestly, this one is special because this is my first time being in an individual event and so I am prepared and I am ready, and so I am excited,” she said.
“I am pretty confident because I have been training and I feel like that is where I bank on for confidence. I trust what I have been doing so I am pretty confident, and my preparations have been going good. Our camp was in Spain for like three weeks and so everything is going smoothly,” she noted.
Williams, who secured second place in the 400m event at the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA)/Puma National Senior Championships behind national record holder Nickisha Pryce last month, highlighted that one of her main goals at the Olympic Games is to achieve a personal-best performance. She believes that if she can achieve this she will definitely be in contention for a medal.
“I don’t think it is a lot of pressure. I feel like I have my own expectations that come before the expectations of anyone else,” she explained. “I am thinking about my own expectations, which is to be in the final. I am also looking for a PR [personal best], because I haven’t run [personal best] all season, so once I get to a [personal best] level then I should be there when the medals are being decided,” Williams reasoned.
