By Kiev Chesney
Guyana’s sprint king Rawle Greene will make a last-minute push to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games when he competes next weekend at the Hampton International Games in Trinidad.
In an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday, Greene said, “I am very confident in myself and I have high expectations for next weekend when I run at Hamptons.”
Greene added that his confidence had been fuelled by the fact that he clocked a comfortable hand-timed 10.20s at the President’s Invitational Grand Prix earlier this year.
He revealed that he had been surprised by the time since he had not been training for the local grand prix and had participated just to stay active.
“Coach Julian (Edan) and I had worked out a training plan in order for me to peak just before the games since I had been looking to use either Hampton or Trinidad Senior National Championships to run the Olympic qualifying times,” he said.
The Hampton Interna-tional Games is a meet sanctioned by the International Associations of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Greene must run at least 10.28s (electronic timing) to make the ‘B’ qualifying time or 10.21s for the ‘A’ time.
Greene said that he ran a comfortable race at the local grand prix and had not been expecting much because the competition had not been challenging and the conditions were not favourable.
“I was actually shocked at the time because I have not run that fast since 2003 and that is strange because I did not have much competition added to the fact that the ground was not in the best shape as the grass was not fully cut and I couldn’t even see my lane properly,” he added.
Greene also mentioned that he had not yet completed the speed-tuning part of his training programme when he clocked his season’s best and said he had been eager to see how he perform after completing all the fine tuning of his training.
Greene will be leaving for the twin island republic on Monday when he joins training partner Alicia Fortune who departed late last month for a last minute Olympic push.
