By Kiev Chesney
Guyana’s top sprinter (locally-based) Rawle Greene moved a step closer to qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games when he clocked his personal best time in the 200m at the Trinidad National Senior Championships last weekend at the Hasley Crawford Stadium.
Greene, who has been chasing after the 100m qualifying time (at least 10.28s electronic timing) for the last few months, has now decided to place the same amount of emphasis on qualifying for the 200m.
Greene clocked his personal best (21.16s) in the 200m last Sunday at the Trinidad National Senior Championships.
He improved on his previous personal record of 21.22s which he recorded almost seven years ago at the 2001 South American Champion-ships.
In an invited comment with Stabroek Sport via e-mail Greene said,” I think I can make the [Olympic] B [qualifying] time because I clocked a good time [21.16s] last weekend.”
Greene added that he did however, plan to keep working on qualifying for the 100m, but will focus more on the 200m for now since he was confident that he can qualify for that event.
After clocking 21.16s – which was the third fastest time in the semifinal – Greene went on to place sixth in the final where he ran 21.17s.
He had failed to qualify for the 100m earlier after he clocked 10.69s which was some five spots out of a chance to run in the finals.
“I feel that I can make the 200m B qualifying time because I think that I am getting better in the longer races so I think it would be easier to break down my time,” he reasoned while explaining that he was also confident that the training that he had been doing for the last two months in Trinidad with the Tigers Athletics Club would be beneficial to him.
His next meet will be this weekend when he takes part in the sprint events at the Movia Jets Games.
After that Greene is hoping to attend the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Championships in Columbia next month where he hopes to run the qualifying standard.
Now 31, Greene said that although it was very important that he qualified for this Olympic Games this time around, said:” Age is just a number and I don’t worry because I know I have lot of running left in me.”
