Simpson

Gaining strength and cleaning up her mechanics - that is how Olympic 100-metre silver medallist Sherone Simpson plans to close the gap between her and the three women who, last season, pulled away from the rest of the world in the women's short sprint.

American champion Carmelita Jeter and Jamaicans Shelly-Ann Fraser and Kerron Stewart distanced themselves from the rest of female sprinters with personal best times of 10.64, 10.73 and 10.75, respectively. Simpson boasts a personal best of 10.82, a time she last ran in 2006, the same year she won the Commonwealth Games 200-metre title.

Last season, Simpson missed her second straight World Championships. She did not compete in Osaka, Japan, after she underwent knee surgery at season's end in 2006 and missed most of the 2007 season. She returned in 2008 and won the 100m silver at the Olympics in Beijing, China, but then spent most of the 2009 season rehabilitating following her second late-season operation in three years, at the end of 2008.

Now that she is back, she finds that she has been left behind and has a lot of work to do.

"I am very focused, seeing that since 2006 I have been doing well. I am the joint silver medallist in Beijing for 2008, but what happened in 2008 is history, so nobody really remembers Sherone Simpson getting the second place. It's all about Shelly-Ann, Jeter and Kerron right now. So I have to train hard to make sure I get back up there and see my name on top."

Charting her way back to the top is going to require greater levels of output from the petite graduate of the University of Technology. Simpson is working on getting stronger and equally as important, improving her mechanics, both essential to enabling her to go even faster than ever before.

"I think that I am one of the smallest athletes and I need to be able to start well and to be able to maintain, especially for the last 30 metres," she said. "Most people can see that one of my weak areas is the last 30 metres of the race. My head is back and I need to ensure that I keep my posture, keep my body forward. Sometimes it's the last five metres that matters, and I need to ensure that I am able to lean. So my body has to be forward, and I am working on that every day."

Her coach, Stephen Francis, she says, has also introduced a very painful way to get her to maintain her posture.

"Sometimes at training, running the 300 (metres) in the last 50 metres when I am tired, that is when I tend to throw my head back. So, with that, he will give me an extra 300 or 200 to do, and with me not wanting to do that, I ensure that I keep my head forward. So far I have been able to keep that posture. So I am hoping it continues."

Coming back, she reveals, has been more about motivation than frustration. At the national champion-ships in June, Simpson, not having competed during the season, just missed making the final of the women's 100m. She finished fifth in her semi-final.

felt good at trials

"I really felt good at the trials, just to be able to go out there and compete," she says, "because just everybody was out there competing. I just wanted to go out there and see what I could have done. I just wanted to know that I could compete without pain."

Even when she finished down the track at the World Athletics Finals in a race where Jeter clocked a world-leading 10.64, she remained undaunted, cognisant of the reality that she was still recovering from surgery and was not as strong as she could have been. She was just happy to be able to compete.

There were moments, though, that were pretty difficult to bear.

"I was really emotional for the 100m final (in Berlin). I was supposed to be in the stands to work with Eurosport but I knew I could not manage it," she says. "So I was in Berlin at my hotel and I watched it and I really felt it because I wanted to be in the final, seeing that in 2008, I was in the final in Beijing, but I was really happy for my teammates."

Simpson anticipates that 2010 will be a busy season for her, even though she is still up in the air about defending her Commonwealth Games 200m title next October in India. Her real ambitions, it seems, lie beyond 2010.

"I've missed two World Championships and I would really like 2010 and beyond to be very good. So, hopefully, I won't miss any more World Championships."