Clay­ton Clarke

Alee­sha Bar­ber is vy­ing to rep­re­sent T&T in the women's 60m hur­dles event at next month's IAAF World In­door Track and Field Cham­pi­onships in In­stan­bul, Turkey. The Na­tion­al in­door 60m out­door 100m hur­dles record hold­er has al­ready at­tained the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard of 8.18 sec­onds for the March 9 to 11 glob­al in­door meet when she ran 8.17 sec­onds in fin­ish­ing sec­ond at the Penn State In­vi­ta­tion­al in Penn­syl­va­nia, USA on Jan­u­ary 27. The 2010 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games cham­pi­on may have to go quick­er than 8.17 to make in­to the fi­nals in Turkey and will sure­ly have to bet­ter her three-year-old "pb" of 8.13 to be a medal con­tender. A sub-8 clock­ing is like­ly to put the 24-year-old in con­tention for the top prize. The for­mer Penn State stand­out had a set­back in her quest for In­door glo­ry as she was in­jured at the end of Jan­u­ary.

But the 2010 NCAA 100m hur­dles bronze medal­list is back to busi­ness de­clar­ing that she is over her in­jury bar­ri­ers. Speak­ing to trackalerts.com re­cent­ly, she ex­plained that she strained her ham­string in late Jan­u­ary: "I have been out up un­til just a few days ago. ...My first race af­ter re­turn­ing to train­ing was at the 105th an­nu­al Mil­rose Games on Feb­ru­ary 11th." She placed 7th in the 60m Hur­dles with a time of 8.33 de­spite hav­ing a lim­it­ed time to pre­pare for the race due to her in­jury. When asked about her thoughts on the Mil­rose race, she re­spond­ed, "I didn't re­act well but it was def­i­nite­ly a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. I didn't have the best start, but with the race be­ing so quick I didn't have the time to fix it." The 2008 Olympian will next com­pete in the up­com­ing Vir­ginia Tech Last Chance Qual­i­fiers in ear­ly March.