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Gatlin has revealed one big concern he has about reigning 100m World Lead Kishane Thompson's running style ahead of the 2024 Olympic games.
American sprint icon Justin Gatlin has revealed a big worry about Kishane Thompson’s running style that could cost him at the Olympic games in Paris this August.
A lot of people might not have known the name Kishane Thompson before the recently concluded Jamaica National Trials.
However, after speeding to a world-leading 9.77s to become the ninth-fastest male sprinter in history, and the fourth-fastest Jamaican in the 100m, with Asafa Powell, Yohan Blake, and Usain Bolt the only men to boast quicker times.
Indeed, he is now the toast of the sprinting world. At 22 years old, Kishane is set to compete in his first Olympics Games, in only his second year as a professional athlete.
Naturally, he has been made the favorite to clinch gold at the event ahead of the likes of Noah Lyles, Oblique Seville, Letsile Tebogo and Ferdinand Omanyala.
However, Thompson has had this tendancy to slow down after 70 meters like he did at the Jamaican Olympic trials, and Gatlin believes it could come to count against him when it matters, drawing comparisons to how 2015 season.
“I remember in 2015, I dropped two or three 9.7s, maybe three. I went to Budapest and Dennis (Mitchell) was like ‘You do not have to run a 9.7 today’ because I was running it everywhere. It was the hardest thing for me not to run fast because you started to understand the rhythm of it,” Gatlin said on his Ready Set Go podcast.
“For him to try and slow down, I can understand why it is more difficult to slow down than speed up. I am curious to see if it will affect him at the Olympics because in every race that he runs, he slows down before the finish line.”
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Although he believes he is the hot favorite, Gatlin believes that tendency about his running will end up exposing him, just like it did for Asafa Powell, a vastly talented athlete who never delivered in championships that mattered.
“He does not have the fight anywhere after 65 meters. He is able to control the race and start shutting down. He has such a gap, the field can close on him and he still has a lead on them.
In the whole season, I had no one to contest me at the second half of the race and when I got to the only race of the year where I was supposed to contend in the second part of the race, I did not have the central nervous system to kick in and battle it because my body was used to shutting down at some point.
“Mentally you may be able to push that, but is your body able to push that?”
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Gatlin believes that the last 30 meters of the race is something Thompson and his coach are really going to work really hard on in order for him to run an optimal race at the Olympic games.
“The last 20 to 40 meters is the icing on the cake. They are going to work on that in the build up to the Olympics and they will unveil when it is time to unveil.”
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