Bailey disappointed Olympic campaign ends in injury
PARIS, France — Despite getting a second chance to qualify for the semi-finals of the Men’s 400m through the new repêchage round at the Olympic Games, Sean Bailey’s hopes came crashing down at Stade de France on Monday.
Bailey, a former national champion, pulled up on the backstretch, holding his left hamstring, during the repêchage round of the 400m event. This marked Bailey’s second failure in the Men’s 400m competition in less than 24 hours. He ran 44.68 seconds to finish fifth in his heat on Sunday, which was not good enough for a place in the semi-finals, dropping him to the repêchage round.
“I don’t feel like anything went wrong in the race,” he said. “I just feel like my body wasn’t recovered and rested for today. Even in the warm-ups and doing some strides, I could feel that my hamstring wasn’t firing. I felt like I needed a couple more hours to get my body woken up.
“I did a block start. I felt it then, and I thought it was going to be a tough race to go around the whole track, so I did the smart thing and stopped.”
Bailey, 27, is the brother of Jamaican sprint icon Veronica Campbell Brown, and is the third-fastest Jamaican this year with his time of 44.64 seconds. National champion Deandre Watkin, who failed to advance from the competition heats and was a no-show for the repêchage round, is the fastest Jamaican in the world in 2024 with his time of 44.48 seconds.
Jevaughn Powell, who will contest the semi-finals, is the second-fastest Jamaican this year with a time of 44.54 seconds.
Bailey said he entered the season with big plans and is distraught that none of them came through this year.
“I am very disappointed because I had high hopes for myself,” he said. “I’m not going to say what I wanted to do, but none of it came through so I am going to go back to the drawing board and come back better for next year. It was an okay season; I feel like this was the big one that we were hoping for. The times weren’t super fast this year so I was really hoping for a big one, come the Olympics, and it didn’t happen. I just have to assess what went wrong and fix it.”
