By BRENT STUBBS
Senior Sports Reporter
bstubbs@tribunemedia.net
A “nagging hamstring issue” has forced quartermiler Shaunae Miller to withdraw from participation as a member of Team Bahamas for the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Relays at the Thomas A Robinson Stadium this weekend.
In an official statement from Claude Bryan, chief executive officer of On Track Management Inc., the agency for Miller, the exact reason for her withdrawal was disclosed only a few days before the competition begins on Saturday.
“Regretfully, Shaunae Miller will be unable to compete at the inaugural IAAF World Relays this coming weekend due to a nagging hamstring issue,” said Bryan in his release. “Her doctor and coach have been working assiduously to get her to a state of race readiness, however, despite their best efforts, she is a week shy of that goal.”
Miller, 20, was originally named to Team Bahamas’ pool for the women’s 4 x 200 metres. Efforts were being made to have her run in both the 4 x 100 and the 4 x 400m, but that request was reportedly rejected by her agents and coaches.
Bryan, in response to the report, expressed a hearty thanks to the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations and its president Mike Sands for his considerate understanding and encouragement.
“Additionally, Shaunae, who will still attend the competition in her role as Adidas/IAAF World Relays Ambassador, wishes to convey both her regret at her inability to compete in front of her adoring home crowd as well as her best wishes to Team Bahamas,” Bryan said.
Miller, who was in town last week, returned to Georgia where she was evaluated by the doctor. According to Bryan, Miller is trying to focus on her recovery as she prepares to return home this weekend for her obligations to her sponsor and the IAAF.
When contacted, Sands said he will reserve comments until today’s daily press conference at the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture.
Team Bahamas coaches Rupert Gardiner and Fritz Grant have indicated that they are working on putting the best quartet together to represent the Bahamas in the relay events the Bahamas is entered in.
It should be noted that Miller is not the only athlete named to the team who will not be competing. Veteran sprinters Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie and Derrick Atkins both withdrew because of injuries.
According to the coaches, there are a few athletes on Team Bahamas who are nursing some injuries that they are working to minimise before the relays get underway on Saturday.
The Bahamas is fielding teams in both the men’s and women’s 4 x 100, 4 x 200 and 4 x 400m relays. Team Bahamas is expected to be formally introduced during the press conference today after an adjustment was made to the original list that was produced at a pep rally on Arawak Cay two weeks ago.
Comments
sheeprunner12 10 years, 6 months ago
I suppose Daddy is back at it again......................... she has to grow up at some point
242orgetslu 10 years, 6 months ago
Across the inky-blue Gulf Stream from Florida, near the sheer edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a new island is emerging from the sea. Although it bears the appealing name Ocean Cay, this new island is not, and never will be, a palm-fringed paradise of the sort the Bahamian government promotes in travel ads. No brace of love doves would ever choose Ocean Cay for a honeymoon; no beauty in a brief bikini would waste her sweetness on such desert air. Of all the 3,000 islands and islets and cays in the Bahamas, Ocean Cay is the least lovely. It is a flat, roughly rectangular island which, when completed, will be 200 acres and will resemble a barren swatch of the Sahara. Ocean Cay does not need allure. It is being dredged up from the seabed by the Dillingham Corporation of Hawaii for an explicit purpose that will surely repel more tourists than it will attract. In simplest terms, Ocean Cay is a big sandpile on which the Dillingham Corporation will pile more sand that it will subsequently sell on the U.S. mainland. The sand that Dillingham is dredging is a specific form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, which is used primarily in the manufacture of cement and as a soil neutralizer. For the past 5,000 years or so, with the flood of the tide, waters from the deep have moved over the Bahamian shallows, usually warming them in the process so that some of the calcium carbonate in solution precipitated out. As a consequence, today along edges of the Great Bahama Bank there are broad drifts, long bars and curving barchans of pure aragonite. Limestone, the prime source of calcium carbonate, must be quarried, crushed and recrushed, and in some instances refined before it can be utilized. By contrast, the aragonite of the Bahamian shallows is loose and shifty stuff, easily sucked up by a hydraulic dredge from a depth of one or two fathoms. The largest granules in the Bahamian drifts are little more than a millimeter in diameter. Because of its fineness and purity, the Bahamian aragonite can be used, agriculturally or industrially, without much fuss and bother. It is a unique endowment. There are similar aragonite drifts scattered here and there in the warm shallows of the world, but nowhere as abundantly as in the Bahamas. In exchange for royalties, the Dillingham Corporation has exclusive rights in four Bahamian areas totaling 8,235 square miles. In these areas there are about four billion cubic yards—roughly 7.5 billion long tons—of aragonite. At rock-bottom price the whole deposit is worth more than $15 billion. An experienced dredging company like Dillingham should be able to suck up 10 million tons a year, which will net the Bahamian government an annual royalty of about $600,000.
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