Fabrice Lapierre ready to challenge for gold at Commonwealth Games
With the World Championships next year, and the Summer Olympics the year after, many top athletes have decided to skip this year’s Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Fabrice Lapierre of Australia is one athlete that isn’t backing down from a chance to win gold in India. The 2010 World Indoor long jump champion says he’ll be there despite it being so late in the season.
"Originally I had doubts but I always wanted to get the gold medal," Lapierre said.
Many athletes have opted out of participating in Delhi including Mo Farah and Jenny Meadows of Britain. Fellow Australian, John Steffensen, is boycotting the Commonwealth Games, and there’s even an abnormally high outbreak of Dengue Fever in India right now which may cause even more athletes to decide to rest their bodies for next season.
It’s difficult for many athletes to compete late in the season, especially for southern hemisphere athletes who compete in their summer, and then have to compete in meets that are held during Europe’s summer.
“The only problem I had was that it was in October and I don't really want to jump that late in the year because it's normally my off-season and the world championships are coming up next year,” said Lapierre. “But I want to win gold medals, including this one.”
Lapierre has been travelling the world since March and admits that there has been significant physical and mental fatigue. He will have a couple weeks of rest at home before heading off again for Delhi.
“It's been very long. I couldn't wait to come home and have familiar surroundings,” he said. “I've done a ridiculous amount of travelling . . . four trips back to Australia, Doha, China, Europe three times, and Texas.”
In recent meets he has not done as well as he would have liked. In the Diamond League final event in Zurich on 19 August, he fouled out and didn’t earn any Diamond League points. Entering the meet he was five points back of Dwight Phillips of the United States, and had a chance to win the Diamond Trophy with first place finish. With the foul out he remained in second place in the Diamond League standing while Phillips went on to win meet and the Diamond Trophy.
He also struggled in Split, Croatia at the Continental Cup earlier in September, finishing in seventh place out of eight with a jump of 7.70m. Dwight Phillips took first in that meet too with a jump of 8.35m.
"I had six fouls in my last Diamond League meet, which has never happened to me before. And then I had the opposite problem in Split, when I couldn't hit the board," Lapierre said.
He’ll compete in one more event before the Commonwealth Games, the Athletics Allstars meet in Sydney. There he’ll work on his techniques in an attempt to correct the problems he’s had in his last two competitions.
“I just have to work on my run-up and get more consistent before the Commonwealth Games,” he said.
Once in Delhi he’ll be facing Chris Tomlinson of England, who finished in fourth place in Diamond League standings, and British long jump record holder, Greg Rutherford.
He’ll also look to break the Australian long jump record of 8.49m, set at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney by Jai Taurima. In a Commonwealth qualifier, Lapierre jumped a huge 8.78m, but the jump was considered ‘wind assisted’ and not included in the record books. The world record is 8.95 set by Mike Powell of the United States in 1991.
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