(CMC) – Elaine Thompson-Herah will ramp up her preparations for next year’s international track and field season under the guidance of Elite Performance Track Club coach, Reynaldo Walcott.
A statement from her management company, Andi Sports, confirmed on Monday that the embattled Jamaican sprint queen had hooked up with Walcott, who coaches Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, with whom Thompson-Herah appears to have a frosty relationship.
Media reports indicate that Thompson-Herah will not be training with athletes of the Elite Performance in Kingston, but Walcott will work with her in a private setting, after he completes his duties with her at the Ashenheim Stadium at Jamaica College each day.
Andi Sports confirmed last Wednesday that the 31-year-old had separated from Shanikie Osbourne, her coach, during the later stages of this past international track and field season, after a breakdown in negotiations over compensation.
Thompson-Herah won a historic sprint double of 100 metres and 200 metres at back-to-back Olympics – 2016 in the Brazilian city of Rio-de-Janeiro, and the COVID-19 delayed 2020 Games in the Japanese city of Tokyo – and will be looking to defend her titles at the Games next year in Paris.
She failed to earn a place on the Jamaica team for the World Athletics Championships in August in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, where she brought Osbourne onto her coaching staff.
Thompson-Herah, the second-fastest woman clocked over 100 with a personal best time of 10.54 seconds, improved her times significantly over the later stages of the international season, so the decision to part ways with Osbourne was surprising in track-and-field circles in Jamaica.
Only deceased American sprint queen Florence Griffith-Joyner, who clocked 10.49 seconds at the United States Olympic Trials in 1988, has run faster than Thompson-Herah in the 100.
Earlier in the year, Thompson-Herah had split with the highly decorated MVP Track Club in a public falling out with iconic coach Stephen Francis.