Defending Olympic 100m champion Elaine Thompson-Herah ran a season-best 10.78s to win the 100m at the Pure Athletics Elite Meet in Clermont, Florida today.

West Indies Women’s head coach Courtney Walsh plans to focus on improving the mental and technical skills of the 30 players currently encamped in Antigua for the next month in preparation for international matches including the World Cup qualifiers later this year.

According to the former West Indies fast bowler turned coach, the upskilling of the women will be a continuation of what began when the women were called to camp in January this year.

Over the past few years, West Indies Women, world champions in 2016, has fallen down the pecking order in world cricket, struggling to make high scores when players like Deandra Dottin, Stafanie Taylor or Hayley Matthews fail to make big scores.

This was evident when the West Indies were swept 5-0 during a five T20 series against England in September 2020, when the side failed to achieve a score of 140 runs in any of the matches. England, meanwhile, scored over 140 runs in all but one of the matches.

Walsh believes that for that trend to end the team cannot rely on just two or three players.

 “Consistency can’t be just three players. If we are playing six or seven batters, not everybody is to come off all the time but we need to have four or five batters to be consistently producing. It can’t be the same three all the time,” said Walsh, who also indicated that there are other areas in which they have to improve as well.

“They also have to be aware of the game situation, so we are going to combine both as we are going to have the batters being a lot more consistent and not just depend on two or three players.”

Walsh revealed that there are signs that the camp in January had already begun to yield positive indicators of the change required.

“We started some drills in the last camp so it will be a continuation of that. We saw where we were getting a little more consistency. We saw where we able to bat 50 overs because in the first game that didn’t happen but in the last two games that happened,” Walsh said referring to three intra-squad practice matches played while in the camp that month.

“I also think it was the mindset as well so those areas we are going to be working on, with the mental skills we are going to stay there (at the crease) and we want them to be technically sound as well to be able to deliver.”

After the high of Saturday’s victory over three-time champion Johan Kristofferson, Jamaica’s Fraser McConnell had to settle for third place in today’s (May 2) round of competition at the 2021 RallyX Nordic Supercar competition in Denmark.

Kemar Roach took career-best figures of 8-40 and 10 wickets in the match as Surrey defeated Hampshire by an innings and 289 runs in their English County Cricket match that ended on Friday.

Roach began the match taking 2-40 in Hampshire’s first innings of 92 all out. However, it was Jordan Clarke who did the bulk of the damage taking 6-21. Lewis McManus top-scored with 31 for Hampshire in their innings that lasted just 34.3 overs.

The situation would only become even direr for Hampshire as 215 from Hashim Amla, 131 from Ollie Pope 131 and knocks of 80 and 78 from Jamie Smith and Roy Burns, respectively, propelled Surrey to 560 for 7 declared.

Roach then moved in for the kill.

Getting prodigious swing both ways, the Barbadian took three in eight balls towards the end of his first spell, two in seven in his second, and three in 13 in his third as Hampshire folded for 179 in their second turn at-bat. 

“It was going conventionally, not reversing," Roach said.

"The way I gripped the ball was a little looser today. It was overcast conditions so the ball was going to do something once you put it in the right areas and stayed strong at the crease. The guys worked incredibly well on the ball and the information I got on the field about different batsmen and their weaknesses worked fantastically."

Once again, McManus was Hampshire’s top scorer with 51.

Roach’s 10-80 was also a career-best for the veteran West Indies pace bowler.

Dwayne Bravo has been traded by the Trinbago Knight Riders to St Kitts and Nevis Patriots. The 37-year-old Trinidadian requested the trade that will see compatriot Denesh Ramdin move the other way prior to the start of the new season.

Reggae Girlz striker Khadijah Shaw could be making a move to England next season based on reports that she is to sign with Manchester City.

It is the clash the world has been waiting for and it comes May 23 at the Müller Grand Prix in Gateshead, the first Wanda Diamond League meeting this year.

The University of Minnesota’s Abigail Schaaffe emerged from last weekend’s Fighting Illini Big 10 Relays with two gold medals but armed with the knowledge that she has to work on being more consistent before the conference championships in mid-May.

Following his impressive win over 200m at the USATF Grand Prix Oregon Relays at Hayward Field last weekend, Jereem Richards feels his move to Pure Athletics has helped bring the best out of him.

The 27-year-old Trinidad stormed to victory in 20.26s leaving Josephus Lyles (20.46) and Jamaica’s Christopher Taylor (20.73) in his wake.

It was his second win from three 200m starts this season following his victory at the Pure Athletics Spring Invitational in Clermont, Florida on April 4 and a second-place finish at the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational in Gainesville, Florida on April 16.

On each of those two occasions, he has run faster – 20.37 in Clermont and 20.30 in Gainesville - but his victory on the weekend was even more impressive considering the -1.3m/s wind he was running into.

“I’m very pleased with my performance last weekend. It gives me a lot of confidence going forward and I’m just trying to keep on building on my progress thus far,” he told Sportsmax. TV.

Richards moved from the University of Alabama under coach Blaine Wiley, who was his coach in 2017 when he won 200m bronze at the World Championships in London and then ran a 43-second relay leg as Trinidad and Tobago upset the USA to win the 4x400m gold medal.

He won the 200m Commonwealth Games title in 2018, silver at the Pan Am Games and then gold in the 4x400m relay at the World Relays in Japan in 2019.

However, moving from Alabama to Florida, he said, was down mainly to the impact of the pandemic.

“With the things that are happening in the world and not being able to train sufficiently with regards to COVID-19 and let’s say it gets back bad and we wouldn’t be able to use the facilities in the College (University of Alabama), I didn’t want to take chances and I decided to put myself in a position where, in the event that this happens, I’m somewhere that I will be able to train, somewhere where I have other professional athletes that might be going through the same struggles,” he told the Trinidad Guardian.

At Clermont, he rubs shoulders with the likes of World Champion Noah Lyles and his brother Josephus and several of the world’s elite sprinters. Training with them each day, he said, has allowed him to bring out his best.

“An improvement that I’ve seen since I moved is being around a lot of talented athletes from all around the world which motivates you to always be your best and push you beyond your limits,” he said.

Jamaicans Andre Russell and Fabian Allen are among five West Indies players who were picked up yesterday’s Pakistan Super League Replacement Draft that is expected to resume. However, one player is on the way out.

Natoya Goule says she feels she has a lot more left in the tank following her fastest 400m in a decade at the UCF Knights Invitational in Florida on Saturday.

Leon Bailey scored his ninth Bundesliga goal of the season and assisted in another as Bayer Leverkusen defeated Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 at the Bay Arena on Saturday.

Despite the intense rivalry they shared on the track during the 1990s, two-time Olympic 100m champion Gail Devers said she always admired and respected Jamaica’s Merlene Ottey for her talent and longevity.

The rivals met in a number of major finals that were talked about for years, especially the epic 1993 World Championships 100m finals in Stuttgart, Germany and the Olympic Games in Atlanta, three years later.

Prior to those two years, Devers and Ottey met in the finals of the 100m finals at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 when Devers won her first Olympic 100 title in 10.80s. Ottey was fifth in 10.88 in one of the closest finals in history. 0.08 seconds separated the first five places.

That race marked the beginning of a tense rivalry between Devers and Ottey that would only intensify over the next four years.

In Stuttgart, Devers got off to a flyer and was ahead midway the race but she was being reeled in by a fast-closing Ottey, who with her final strides appeared to have caught the diminutive American as they crossed the line together.

Unsure of who won, the finalists stood around looking up at the scoreboard for what seemed like an eternity. Officials eventually announced that Devers had been awarded the victory even though both she and the Jamaican icon were given the same time of 10.82.

Jamaican protested the result but the decision upheld, handing the American.

By 1996, the 36-year-old Ottey was at her fifth Olympics, Devers her third, and once again they came face to face in the 100m finals and once again, history repeated itself. Devers got off to a great start only to be reeled in by Ottey and sure enough, they crossed the finish line together.

Both were timed in 10.94 but like in Stuttgart, the American was given the nod. The circumstances created tensions between the two countries and their athletes. However, Devers said those tensions were simply about competition.

“You just get caught up in ‘this is competition and you got coaches who say we’re going to protest this,” Devers told Ato Boldon on his Athletics Live show on Instagram last week.

She said she had no idea why things turned out the way they did, why it always seemed to come down to her and Ottey.

“It keeps coming up that it’s these two every time. I don’t know why it was always us but we were always willing to go to the wire,” she said.

Devers explained that in the early days' everyone kind of kept to themselves, leaving little to interact with her rivals.

“When we were competing, it was (Irina) Privalova, it was me, it was Gwen Torrence, it was that four that you could not pick who was going to win on that day,” she said.

“And we can’t duck each other, we gotta go, we gotta run, gotta bring you’re A-plus game because they’re bringing their A-game. So with Merlene, I always knew she was a great athlete and I would always tell her ‘You still running, shoot…”

She said that as time passed, they both got the chance to get to know each other and the tensions cooled.

“While you’re competing everybody is in their own camp, you don’t sit there and socialize anyway, but as we got older, going to awards ceremonies or even with social media, we were able to talk to each other,” she said.

“She knows that I have always admired her because I don’t care at what age, if she steps out there now I am concerned. You might want to be worried because if she is in the lane, she is ready to go.”

Jamaica’s Olympic hopefuls Charokee Young and Chrisann Gordon-Powell won their respective 400m races in contrasting fashion at the 2021 LSU Alumni Gold meet at the Bernie Moore Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday.

 Shaunae Miller-Uibo believes she and her training partner Chrisann Gordon-Powell are in a good place following their respective season-opening races in the 400m yesterday.