The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

Team Bahamas is expected to begin competition today at the World Athletics’ World Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, with three of the five members in action.

Sprinter Anthonique Strachan will be the lone competitor in the women’s 60 metres, while collegian Megan Moss and two-time Olympic gold medallist Shaunae Miller-Uibo will begin competition in the women’s 400 metres.

Olympic finalist Devynne Charlton will compete in the women’s 60m hurdles on day two on Saturday and Donald Thomas, the only other member of Team Bahamas, will not see action until the final day of competition on Sunday when he contests the final of the men’s high jump. Strachan, who was also afforded an invite by World Athletics based on her world ranking, will get the ball rolling for the Bahamas when she makes her World Indoor debut in the heats of the women’s 60m.

Serbia is six hours ahead of the Bahamas so, by the time this is printed, the preliminaries would have been completed.

The 28-year-old Strachan, still training with MVP Track Club in Jamaica, will take her personal and season’s best of 7.17 seconds into lane six in the fourth of six heats in today’s opening session.

The first three in each heat and the next six fastest qualifiers advance to the semi-finals, set for the evening session with the final to follow later in the night. Moss, on the other hand, will open up in the third of five heats of the women’s 400m in lane two. The 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Kentucky is making her senior individual debut in a global event, although she ran on the women’s 4 x 400m relay team at the delayed 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, last August. The team included Strachan, who ran on the anchor leg, but she suffered a slight injury and opted not to complete the race.

Miller-Uibo, who turned out to be one of the key stars at the games as she repeated as the Olympic champion from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016, will compete in the preliminaries of the 400m in lane two in the fifth and final heat.

Although she didn’t compete in any indoor event this year, Miller-Uibo comes in with the fastest PBs of the field, having posted a North and Central American and Caribbean record of 50.21 indoors and 48.36 outdoors.

The 27-year-old Miller- Uibo expected to have a showdown with Dutchwoman Femke Bol, the Olympic 400m hurdles bronze medallist, who has been undefeated indoors for the past two years, in what is being billed as one of the marquee events this weekend.

The duo, along with Moss, will have to negotiate through the field as the first two in each heat and the next two fastest qualifiers to advance to the semi-finals in the evening session. The final will not be staged until the evening session of day two on Saturday.

Fresh off earning the World Athletics’ 2022 Indoor Tour Gold series for the women’s 60m hurdles, Charlton will have to wait until Saturday’s morning session to begin competition in that event when she competes in the fifth of six heats in lane six. The first three in each heat and the next six fastest finishers will advance to the semi-finals in the evening session to determine who will line-up in the final that will follow later that night.

Charlton, a graduate assistant at the University of Kentucky, has produced a season’s best of 7.90, just one tenth of a second off her PR of 7.89m, which stands as the Bahamian national record. She’s listed as a potential to not only make the final, but win a medal. At 26, Charlton will be appearing in her second World Indoors. She made her initial appearance in 2018 in Birmingham, England, where she placed eighth in the final. She’s coming off her sixth place in the final of the Olympics in the 100m hurdles last August in Tokyo.

Thomas, the lone Bahamian male competitor on the team, also earned an invite from World Athletics based on his world rankings. He will be the fifth of 12 competitors in the line-up for the men’s high jump final on Sunday.

The 37-year-old Grand Bahamian comes in with a PR of 7-feet, 9 ¼-inches or 2.37 metres and a season best 7-4 ½ (2.25m), but the World Indoors, along with the Olympics, are the only two global events where he hasn’t won a medal.