Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, photo by Getty Images / British Athletics
This is an inteview with Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaican pocket rocket. Shelly Ann will be involved in the London DL Call room, to be held on 4 July 2020. Details below and the embed is below as well!
Fraser-Pryce: Lockdown was pretty bad
Jamaican sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has said she is desperate to get back into competition mode, admitting that the mental and physical strain of lockdown has been “demotivating”.
“Lockdown was pretty bad for the first two months,” Fraser-Pryce told the London edition of the Wanda Diamond League Call Room, which is due to air at 13.00 EST (18.00 GMT/UTC) on Facebook and YouTube this Saturday.
With the athletics calendar put on hold in the spring due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Fraser-Pryce and other athletics stars were not only denied high-level competition, but also had to adapt their training programmes.
And the Jamaican claims that being forced to return to dirt track training has taken a mental as well as a physical toll.
“They shut down the national stadium, which is where we train. It started to give me a lot of problems with my knees and my toes because you can’t sprint at the level you want to on a dirt track.”
“It was really hard and sometimes it was demotivating. We had to split into groups because no more than ten people could be at the track, and we had to be doing track and gym work back to back.”
Now, things have settled down and the multiple Olympic champion is able to train at the national stadium once again.
And Fraser-Pryce admits that there was also a positive side to lockdown.