Odyssey to Oregon

2022 ODYSSEY TO OREGON

stands a chance to win and to match two‐time runner‐up James Beckford with a second trip to the podium. Anything less and he will have to wheel and come again at the 2023 Worlds. Gayle isn’t the only big jumper struggling. Juan Miguel Echevarria of Cuba, who beat the Jamaican handily at the 2019 Pan‐Am Games, was favoured in Doha but now the 2021 Olympic runner‐up is nowhere to be found on the 2022 performance list. The 23‐ year‐old Cuban jumped 8.62 in 2019 and 8.50 metres in 2021. The women’s 100 field is formidable. Aside from Thompson‐Herah, Jackson, Britain’s 2019 silver medal winner Dina Asher‐Smith, Ivory Coast’s third‐placer and Marie‐

mind with a 60‐metre win at the World Indoor Championships in 6.96 seconds. Fraser‐Pryce can’t take anyone lightly. She won’t. Times of 10.79, 10.83, 10.89, 10.93 and 10.94 seconds before the Jamaican Nationals could mean that Thompson‐Herah is on her way to the form which carried her to the second fastest 100‐metre time ever in Eugene last August – 10.54 and 10.61 in Tokyo. In peak condition, she might even attack the world record of 10.49 seconds set by Florence Griffith‐Joyner in 1988. If the slim 30‐year‐old doesn’t quite regain those high‐speed levels, Shelly‐Ann Fraser‐Pryce will reach out and touch her fifth 100‐metre title. No one else, man or woman, has more than three.

Josée Ta Lou, Mujinga Kambundji of Switzerland blew everyone’s Tajay Gayle on his way to winning the long jump at the Doha World Championships in 2019.