The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

Coming off a hamstring injury in 2019 and limited competition in 2020 because of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, Bahamian high jumper Donald Thomas said he’s just trying to get back into the groove of competing again.

Thomas and Jamal Wilson went head-to-head for the first time this year in an international meet at the Wanda Diamond League at the Qatar SC Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on Friday.

While Wilson came in tied for fifth place with 2016 Olympic Games gold medallist Derek Drouin from Canada with their season’s bests of 7-feet, 4 1/4-inces or 2.24 metres, Thomas got eighth place with 7-2 1/2 (2.20m).

It was a meet that resembled a final at either the Olympic Games or World Championships with Ilya Ivanyuk, one of the naturalised athletes from Russia, winning with 7-7 3/4 (2.33m). He was the bronze medallist at the 2019 World Championships in Doha.

Hometown favourite and reigning back-to-back world champion and Olympic silver medallist Mutaz Essa Barshim from Qatar, did his season’s best of 7-6 1/2 (2.30m) for second.

Olympic fourth place finisher Andriy Protsenko of Ukraine was third with his season’s best and Australian Brandon Starc, the Commonwealth Games champion at home in the Gold Coast in 2018, was fourth, both with 7-5 1/4 (2.27m).

Belarusian Maksim Nedasekau, the World Championships’ fourth place finisher, beat out Thomas for seventh place with 7-4 1/4 (2.24m).Thomas, the 36-year-old 2007 world champion, said it’s just a matter of getting into rhythm after suffering the right hamstring injury in 2019 and not competing in 2020 because of the pandemic.

“I am in great shape, so I expected to jump much higher, but I’m just trying to find the rhythm so that I could execute,” Thomas said. “I can take some of the positives away from it and work on it.”

Thomas, who has participated in every major international competition over the past decade, has not yet attained the qualifying standard of 7-7 3/4 (2.33m) for the postponed 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in July.

Although the 32-year-old Wilson has done the standard prior to the start of COVID-19, Thomas said the mark is in his reach and he’s confident that over the next few days, whenever he competes again, he should be able to accomplish the feat.

“I haven’t been competing on a weekly basis,” said Thomas, who opened his season in Miramar, Florida with 7-3 3/4 (2.23m) on April 10.

“I just have to get race ready and competition ready and go from there. I don’t have any concerns about making the Olympic cut. I will be there.”

If he doesn’t attain the standard on this international trip, Thomas will have to wait until he returns home for the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations’ National Championships at the end of June when he and Wilson will once again go head-to-head.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time and rarely have I been able to see another Bahamian in the same field as me,” he said. “It’s good that we have two Bahamians competing in the highest quality meets.

“Me and Jamal are quite cool, so it’s always good to be able to compete with and against him. We tend to bring out the best in each other.”

Back in action now in the COVID-19 environment, Thomas said it’s a little different from the normal meets prior to 2020 because he had the crowd to rely on.

“Now there’s no crowd. It’s more like you are in practice jumping,” he said.

“It’s a lot different. I think I’m learning how to jump without the crowd.

“I just think the more competition I go to and there’s no crowd, at some point, you have to compete. I love to see the crowd cheering and rallying me up, but it’s something that I have to adapt to.”

This was the first of six high jump competitions for the men in the Diamond League.

Wilson earned four qualifying points and Thomas got one.