‘Hansle will be back’ - Trecia Smith trusts Parchment to overcome injury hurdle

The most painful moment of the Eugene World Athletics Championships came moments before the 110m Hurdles final when Jamaica's Olympic champion Hansle Parchment was stung by injury.

Watching from afar, 2005 triple jump World champion Trecia Smith was moved by Parchment's misfortune but she hopes he will come back and contend for gold next year.

Smith encourages Parchment to overcome the setback and to set his sights on the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

"Hansle is a true champion actually, and he's had injuries, so I know he will come back from it", the two-time Commonwealth Games gold queen said, "and like everybody knows, next year is another opportunity. There's another World Championships, so go back to the drawing board."

Smith had her own encounter with injury at the 2005 World Championships. She injured a leg in qualifying but didn't quit. Clever work by the Jamaican medical team, and leg strapping, allowed her to take her place in the final and win. Despite the discomfort, she bounced 15.11m to win Jamaica's first World or Olympic gold medal in a field event.

The former Manning's and University of Pittsburgh star now works as a physical therapist in the United States, and, as such, she was happy to hear that scans of Parchment's leg showed no obvious muscle tears.

"I heard preliminarily that the ultrasounds were negative, so that's good," she said. "He probably just disrupted the sheath and not the muscle, so he's looking at very minimal downtime. I just hope psychologically that it didn't affect him and he can bounce back from this."

Parchment has had to walk this road before,. the Olympic bronze medallist in 2012 and World runner-up in 2015, the tall Morant Bay native was injured in a freak accident before the 2016 National Senior Championships final. Though he received a World top-3 medal exemption from the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association, he was unable to prove fitness in time for the Rio Olympics and lost his place on the team to Andrew Riley.

Last year, he came back from injury just in time to place third at the Nationals. Then he peaked perfectly to edge Holloway at the Tokyo Olympics with his fastest time of the year, 13.04 seconds.

"He has good people around him," Smith said. "Decompress from this and come again."

With Parchment on the sidelines, Grant Holloway retained the title he won in Doha in 2019, and joined fellow Americans Greg Foster and Allen Johnson as the only men to defend the 110m Hurdles title. Holloway won in 13.03 seconds with Trey Cunningham giving the United States a one-two finish.