Anthony Foster, Gleaner Writer
Two-time Olympic Women's 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown hugs her 11-year-old brother, Sean Bailey after arriving at the Norman Manley International Airport recently. - Peta-Gaye Clachar/Staff Photographer
Two-time Olympic 200m champion, Veronica Campbell-Brown, has warned her fellow Jamaican athletes not to pay much attention to allegations of drug use being promoted in certain quarters.
Since the Beijing Olympics, where Jamaica swept all the sprint finals on its way to winning six gold, three silver and two bronze medals, several detractors including United States Olympic legend, Carl Lewis. have questioned if Jamaica's top athletes are on drugs.
But Campbell-Brown, who repeated her 200-metre Athens gold medal performance in Beijing with an impressive 21.74 - the joint 12th fastest time ever - said it is not unusual for people to criticise athletes when they run "extremely fast".
It's natural
"It's natural to question a lot of things in life," Campbell-Brown was quick to point out. "Over the years, when you look at all the past times that people ran, as soon as somebody run extremely fast people are going to speculate and are going to criticise," said Campbell-Brown.
"All I can, and all everybody need to do, is to continue train hard. You cannot really listen to what people have to say because not everybody's going to have positive things to say. You just have to focus on yourself and what you have to do," she urged.
Meanwhile, Campbell-Brown, who has won medals at every level for Jamaica, is eyeing Merlene Ottey's 10.74 national 100m record.
She said in order to achieve that mark though, it's going to take a lot more work.
"I will just continue to train hard and try to correct all the little technical flaws that I have and just continue to run fast," explained Campbell-Brown, who has also won World Youth (100m), World Junior (sprint double) and World Senior (100m) titles.
"As long as I can fix all the little areas, then the time will come. I am not going to focus on the time because that will distract me from what I need to do to achieve the time," she said.
