News - 22.05.2010

Fraser welcomes Jeter’s challenge – Glad she ‘raised the bar really, really high’ – IAAF Diamond League

Fraser and Jeter
22 May 2010 – Shanghai, China - Jamaica’s World and Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser is looking forward to renewing her rivalry with Carmelita Jeter tomorrow on the track where the American rounded off last season with the fastest time of the year, 10.64sec, at the Shanghai meeting.

“Carmelita raised the bar really, really high at the end of last year, and I for one am really happy that she did,” said Fraser, also an IAAF Diamond League Ambassador, who ran a personal best of 10.73sec to win last year’s World 100m title in Berlin, with Jeter third in 10.90.

Fraser welcomes the latest extension of the US-Jamaica sprint rivalry as the women’s 100m makes its first appearance in the new IAAF Diamond League. “I definitely think it’s a friendly rivalry,” she said. “Speaking for myself, when Carmelita goes on the track its nice. Competing against each other means we get attention as female runners. I mean, the men are doing their thing, and so are we. Everyone looks forward to seeing Carmelita or Sherone, or me and Carmelita, or Veronica and Carmelita...”

Working on her start, and her finish

While Jeter competed at the IAAF’s World Indoor Championships in Doha, placing third in a race won by Jamaica’s Olympic 200m champion, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Fraser concentrated on her training with coach Stephen Francis.

“Well actually my coach does not think I have a good start,” Fraser said with a grin. “He thinks I should work on my exit from the starting blocks. I’m also working on the last 30 metres of my race. I think I’m getting there, but it’s not easy because, I get annoyed sometimes trying to get the drills right, but I keep working on it.

“ For me there are always things to improve on,  I’m not perfect at anything, so trying to get everything right in training is always a plus for me.”

Busy off the track with Unicef

With her hair braided and dyed purple, and her yellow and orange t-shirt, Fraser presented a colourful and amiable figure at the conference. But her face grew more serious as she explained about the work she has been doing back home this year in her new capacity as the first Unicef National Goodwill Ambassador for Jamaica.

“One of the reasons I think I was so excited to be a part of the Unicef scheme is that in Jamaica I am from an area where a lot of violence and crime has been happening,” she said.
“I have seen where a lot of girls or boys my age, they either didn’t get to finish high school, or they died or something bad of that sort.

“So I can understand from that standpoint to know what children are going through in Jamaican and go to schools to help.

“ If you take somebody from Upper St Andrew in Jamaica, which is somewhere that is upper class, to talk to somebody from an area such as Waterhouse, where I’m from, they won’t understand because they are not from the area, they will not know what they are going through.

 “I am coming from the same situation, so I can relate to them and help them to understand that even though things may not be the way you want them to be there is always something called dreams.

“ Once you dream, and follow your dreams, and just work hard, and not just follow everything in your community, things can happen.

 “I can tell you that, a lot of things happen there in Waterhouse, you’d be pretty, pretty surprised to see what happens there. When I grew up I said that I’m not going to become a statistic, I’m not going to become one of those young girls who decide not to go to school.

“I decided to find a way out which was through education and also through my talent. So I did that.

“And now my work for Unicef is focused talking to children about crime and violence, which is important for me because I get to express myself and actually tell them things that I have gone through and seen and to tell them not turn to violence but try to elevate themselves to something different.”

It is a genuinely lofty aspiration for a young woman who has already achieved so much of her sporting ambition.

Mike Rowbottom for IAAF Diamond League