Ennis-London still feeling hurt after failing to win medal in Beijing

Raymond Graham

Star Writer

HAMPTON, Virginia

Veteran Jamaican sprint hurdler Delloreen Ennis-London is still feeling hurt after missing out on a medal at the Beijing Olympics.

The 33-year-old Ennis-London, who shed tears after finishing fifth in the final at her third Olympic Games, says her medal hopes were severely dented after she was forced to attend the pre-Olympics training camp in Tianjin, China, without her personal coach.

Speaking from her home in Texas a week ago, Ennis-London said: "I am very angry and upset that we were forced to go to a mandatory training camp three weeks before the Olympic Games without my personal coach."

bad separation

According to Ennis-London, the national association should not have separated those athletes who were doing technical events from their coaches. She added that if the personal coaches of these athletes could not be allowed in the camp, they (the athletes) should have stayed with them until at least a couple of days before their events.

"Whenever I have done well, my coach has always been there and the last two World Champion-ships where I won medals, he was there to take me through," she said.

weaknesses and strengths

Although thanking coach Fitz Coleman for his assistance, Ennis-London thinks that was not enough as her personal coach is the only one who knows her weaknesses and strengths.

"On most occasions, I had to spend my time setting up the hurdles before practice and if my coach was there, I could have concentrated more on the task at hand instead of burdening myself with the extra duties," said the veteran hurdler.

Ennis-London strongly feels that as someone who has re-presented the country well over the years she should have had an accredited personal coach.

"When you look at the athletes from Jamaica who got medals at the Olympics, all their personal coaches were there and I am sure that would have made a diffe-rence with me," she continued.

Ennis-London, who was a silver medallist at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki and a bronze-medal winner in Osaka last year, had high hopes of getting her first Olympic medal. After missing the final by a whisker four years ago in Athens, she was peaking at the right time and heading into the Games, she was favoured to be among the medals.

bite the dust

A very technical event, the 100m hurdles has seen the favourites at the past two Olympic Games biting the dust. In Beijing, American Lolo Jones, who had looked a likely gold medallist, saw her dreams going up in smoke after hitting the ninth hurdle in the final where Ennis-London finished a close fifth to upset winner, Dawn Harper, also of the United States.

Turning to a recent article on the Sports Illustrated website which alleged that she had ordered and received illegal drugs, she bluntly replied: "I am really disappointed with how this was done and I have already made a statement to all media houses giving my side of the story."

In that statement, Ennis-London said that in nine years as a professional athlete, she has never taken performance-enhan-cing drugs. She said she had been tested in and out of competition hundreds of times and had a 100 per cent clean record.

Asked if she would try for one more Olympic Games, Ennis-London stated that she was taking it one day at a time.

"I am not putting any limits on my body. When the body tells me that I cannot go any further, then I will call it a day. I had a very great season and I am definitely looking forward to the World Champion-ships in Berlin next year," she said.

❒ Blames mandatory pre-Games camp

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Delloreen Ennis-London