A change of environment in the offseason seems to be paying off for Natalliah Whyte, Jamaica’s 2019 World Championships gold medallist, who last weekend ran a brand new lifetime best in the 100m, which signalled that good things could be in store for the remainder of the season.

In 2019, Whyte who was then training at MVP International in Florida ran a blistering lead-off leg before handing off to 100m gold medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce as Jamaica sped to a gold medal in the 4x100m relay at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.

Notwithstanding the intervening ‘pandemic year’, 2020, when Covid-19 shut the world down; her confidence boosted by the gold-medal performance in Doha, Whyte began 2021 in fine form running a lifetime best of 11.04 at the Pure Athletics Sprint Elite Meet in Miramar, Florida on May 2. However, for reasons that she is yet to comprehend, Whyte failed to make Jamaica's team to the Tokyo Olympic Games after finishing seventh in the 100m semi-finals at the National Championships last June in a disappointing 11.52.

“I don’t know what happened to be honest. I started the season well but didn’t progress,” she said while revealing that the disappointment of not making the team to Tokyo was hard to take.

“I took not making the team really hard but sometimes we rise, sometimes we fall but you have to know how to turn negatives into positives.”

During the season break, Whyte took the decision to leave the MVP International training group for the Rana Reider-led Tumbleweed group in Jacksonville, hoping that a change of environment might bring about the change she needed.

“I eventually started to take the positives from last season and knew that eventually, I had to leave the past in the past because it already happened and there was nothing I could do but work on the future. So this is a new chapter and I am just trying to work even harder, stay healthy and apply what I’m learning,” she said.

So far, it seems to be working well.

On April 30, in her first 100m of the season at the UNF Invitational in Jacksonville, she ran a lifetime best of 10.97 to follow up on the 22.57 she ran over 200m two weeks before at the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational in Gainesville.

“I’m really happy with the results as much as you would imagine,” she told Sportsmax.TV afterwards. “I just want to stay patient, continue to work on the many things I can improve on and see what else God has in store for me.”

She does admit, however, that despite the early success, making the move to Tumbleweed to work with Reider was not an easy decision but she believes it was the correct one.

“I have to say making changes is hard but sometimes changes can be good,” she said.

“I have been working on a lot of things and also learning a lot of new things so hopefully putting the new knowledge together will help me reach the goals I have made for myself for this season.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tokyo Olympics 100m bronze medalist, Megan Tapper, says her support team helped her find motivation after she fell in the final at the 2019 Doha World Championships.

The diminutive sprint hurdler, who won national titles in 2016 and again in 2021, had improved significantly during the season when she ran what was then a new lifetime best of 12.63. However, after getting to the final in Doha, she hit the first hurdle and fell.

Speaking on the latest episode of On Point on the SportsMax TV YouTube channel, Tapper elaborated on the emotions she experienced during that moment on the track.

“Just complete and utter devastation. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe that the opportunity that I trained so long and hard for ended in such devastation. There’s no other word that can basically describe that moment,” Tapper said.

Tapper says those emotions also stemmed from the fact that she was in great shape and ready for the race.

“I’ve never been ready, up to that moment, for a race, the way I was ready for that final and unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish the race,” she said.

In that moment, according to Tapper, she was unable to contain her emotions.

“The feeling was overwhelming. I wasn’t able to be the composed Megan that most of us know because the emotions were so raw and overwhelming,” said Tapper.

Afterwards, she said, she sought support from those close to her for support. 

“I reached out to the various people who were in my circle at the time and they would say to me 'don’t worry about it, this is just another roadblock. You are still Megan, you are still capable, anything is still possible for you, shake it off and let’s go again. Talking to my support team was how the motivation came back for me,” said Tapper.

The full interview can be seen on the SportsMax TV YouTube channel.

 

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