By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – American Alexis Holmes said she would embrace a busy competition schedule after winning the women’s 400 metres indoor national title on Sunday in New York, with plans to compete at the world championships in Nanjing, China while others opt out.
The Olympic 4x400m relay gold medallist wrested the lead by the 100m mark on Staten Island and broke the tape in 50.51 seconds, the second-fastest time this year, with Rosey Effiong finishing second in 51.43.
Holmes, who is expected to feature in start-up Grand Slam Track’s inaugural meet in Kingston less than two weeks after the March 21-23 world indoors wraps up, said she had no fear of an unusually packed schedule.
“I’m somebody that, if I’m feeling good and I’m healthy, I love to compete. I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “It’s not a lot of time but my coach has been doing this a lot. I feel good that we’ll make it work.”
The biennial world indoors postponed from 2020 due to the COVID pandemic has been shoe-horned into the athletics calendar between the more prestigious world outdoor championships later this year in Tokyo and last year’s Paris Olympics.
Just one of the six American winners from last year’s worlds in Glasgow will defend their title, with Grant Holloway looking to build on his astonishing career run in the 60m hurdles.
Nikki Hiltz, who uses they/them pronouns and will join Holmes on the Grand Slam Track circuit, wrapped up a blockbuster trials weekend with wins in the women’s 3,000m and 1,500m but said they would stay at home to focus on the outdoor season.
Hobbs Kessler, who won the same events on the men’s side, producing a meet record 7:38:00 in Saturday’s 3,000m, said he had also concluded his indoor season.
“I’m going to take a little downtime, reset mentally and physically, try to develop into the best runner I can be over the next couple of months – just back to base work,” he told reporters.
The national championships wrapped up on Sunday with another packed crowd at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex as Ronnie Baker won the men’s 60m in a well-executed 6.52 seconds, six hundredths of a second ahead of Coby Hilton.
Celera Barnes eked out a win on the women’s side in 7.11, just three thousands of a second ahead of Jacious Sears.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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