By Neto Baptiste
National sprinter Cejhae Greene said that having qualified for next month’s World Athletics Championships has taken a tremendous weight off his shoulders and will allow him to work on key areas ahead of the World Athletics meet to be held in Eugene, Oregon, from July 15-24.
“It always feels good when you get that monkey off your back, so to speak but, to be honest, coach and I were just focusing on trying to get through practices and to get through races healthy and executing really well. We know that once we execute good races that we are going to qualify and we’ve proven it time and time again that once we’re healthy and we execute good races that we could run really fast, so that’s the main focus in terms of what we were doing. It’s good to just get the qualification out of the way. There are still some stuff we need to fix, but besides the general expectations of just trying to run fast when it counts, that’s really it right now,” he said.
Greene bettered the World Champions’ qualifying mark of 10.05 seconds for the 100 meters on Sunday when he clocked a season best 10.02 seconds to finish second in the Music City Track Carnival in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Antiguan said he can now turn his attention to the Antigua and Barbuda National Track & Field Championships slated for June 25-26 at the YASCO Sports Complex.
“Nationals is coming up and that’s exciting and I am excited for nationals for many reasons because it’s a chance for me to come home and see the family. In my line of work, you spend so much time away from family that I genuinely, truly do miss it, so I miss times like nationals where I get to come home and see them and have them see me race in person,” Greene said.
“I don’t really get to race home too many times because there are not a lot of meets for people like us in terms of professional athletes and so it’s always good to come home and put on a show for not only my family and my Willikies family who supports me so much but just the nation in general. They normally see us run on TV so it’s always good to come and put on a show for them at home,” he added.
The Princess Margaret School (PMS) alumnus said his main aim now is to stay healthy going into the international event adding that it has been challenging from a financial standpoint just to keep himself going.
“The struggle has always been able to have the means to stay healthy, having the funds to take care of ourselves, get the regular massages, chiropractor, seeing a physical therapist so that’s really the struggle. The name of the game right now is who can stay healthy and who can afford to stay healthy so that’s a bit frustrating sometimes but we try to work with what we have so in terms of preparation, we have been doing well in practice and stuff like that,” he said.
A number of the country’s top athletes to include Greene, women’s sprinter Joella Lloyd, Soniya Jones, young Dwayne Fleming and others are expected to compete at the National Championships.