MVP STARS OUT!

Training camp snub disqualifies athletes

By HG HELPS Editor-at-Large

Monday, August 10, 2009

It appears unlikely that some of Jamaica's top athletes will represent the island at the World Championships in Athletics, which starts this weekend in the historic German city of Berlin.

Four of the big names, Olympic 100 metres champion Shelly-Ann Fraser, former world 100 metres record-holder Asafa Powell, 400 metres runner Sherika Williams and sprint hurdler Brigitte Foster Hylton, all members of the Maximising Velocity Power (MVP) Track Club have not shown up at the mandatory pre-World Championships training camp in Nuremberg, Germany, making them ineligible to compete at the championships.

Asafa Powell and Shelly-Ann Fraser

Reports have been surfacing - even more so since Williams posted a message on her social network website, Facebook, stating that: "Oh, well, the JAAA say we can't run at World Championships, because we did not attend the training camp," - that the four were automatically axed from the squad.

Inside athletics sources told the Observer late last night that the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) to which the JAAA reports, had insisted that all athletes selected should attend the camp for, among other things, providing urine and blood samples for drug testing.