Athletes looking to skip Europe

With the 2020 athletics season in a topsy-turvy state because of the coronavirus pandemic, a number of coaches are leaning towards their athletes skipping the European circuit.

Sprinctec Track Club head coach Maurice Wilson said that he is not in support of his athletes travelling to Europe with the uncertainty of meets and the fluctuation of the number of cases of COVID-19 on the continent.

Instead, Wilson wants his athletes to take part in a few local meets before shutting down the season.

"I'm not their agents so I can't tell them where to go, but I am not in support of athletes travelling," he said. "I think we can have a few meets here and then we start training again in September for the next season."

Lennox Graham, the coach of former World 100m hurdles champion Danielle Williams and top Jamaican 400m hurdlers, Leah Nugent and Kemar Mowatt, shares similar sentiments.

"If we have any meets close by us, we will take part in those and then shut it down for the season and start again for next year in the fall," Graham said. "When the pandemic forced us to stop, the general plan was to shut down for the season and after about five weeks, I said let's try to get back into some condition with whatever we had available to us because we had the gym and track close down."

Not only will Racers Track Club's athletes skip to European circuit, but they will not compete for the rest of the year.

"We weren't training with competition in mind based on the fact that there was nothing on the table, I decided to proceed on a safer path of development which is primarily for next season," Racers head coach Glen Mills said.

There is still no certainty as to whether the Wanda Diamond League series will take place, as number of the meets has had to be pushed back on multiple occasions, while others have been cancelled.