Jamaica’s twice 200 metres world champion Shericka Jackson will not contest the sprint double at the Paris Olympics after dropping the 100 from her programme, team manager Ludlow Watts said on Wednesday.
Jackson, who pulled up with a calf cramp in her final outing before the Games in Hungary on July 9, clocked her season’s best of 10.84 seconds to win the 100 at the Jamaican trials.
“She has given up her place in the 100 metres ... all the information that we can provide is that she is not going to participate in the 100 metres,” Watts, Jamaica’s track and field team manager, told Reuters.
“Shashalee Forbes is her replacement in the women’s 100 metres. I don’t know the reasons, I’m just dealing with what is the outcome.”
Forbes was fourth in the 100 in 11.04 seconds at the Jamaican trials.
Olympic debutant Tia Clayton and twice Olympic 100 champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will carry Jamaica’s best medal hopes in the blue riband event.
Elaine Thompson-Herah, who won the sprint double at the 2016 Rio Games and again in Tokyo three years ago, will not defend her titles after dropping out of the Jamaican trials last month with an Achilles injury.
American world champion Sha’Carri Richardson, who holds the world-leading time of 10.71 seconds this year, will start as the favourite for the 100 gold medal.
The United States has not won the women’s 100 title in the 28 years since Gail Devers topped the podium at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. American Marion Jones crossed the line first in Sydney in 2000 but was stripped of the gold for doping offences.
The preliminary rounds of the women’s 100 at the Paris Games start on the second day of the athletics at the Stade de France on Friday, with the semifinals and final on Saturday.
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