KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Ja­maican sprint queen Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah con­firmed on Mon­day that she has de­part­ed from the MVP Track Club, which is head­ed by renowned coach Stephen Fran­cis.

A me­dia state­ment from “Team Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah” said she had re­sumed train­ing for the 2022 sea­son, when she will at­tempt to win her first in­di­vid­ual gold medal at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Eu­gene, Ore­gon.

The me­dia state­ment added the dou­ble Olympic cham­pi­on was still in the process of fi­nal­is­ing her train­ing arrange­ments, and she was “con­sid­er­ing all op­tions avail­able con­cern­ing her team”.

“In light of an abun­dance of re­quests from my fans and con­cerned Ja­maicans, I want to as­sure every­one that I have be­gun my train­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly and will con­tin­ue to do so while I fi­nalise all as­pects of my team for the up­com­ing sea­son,” the me­dia state­ment said.

“I want to thank every­one for their sup­port and ex­press ap­pre­ci­a­tion to those who have reached out in con­cern. I re­main com­mit­ted to rep­re­sent­ing my coun­try and to lead with courage and grace as I am aware that I in­spire young women across the world who have dreams and who dare to see those dreams come to pass.”

The me­dia state­ment came short­ly af­ter Thomp­son-Her­ah, ar­guably the fastest woman alive, was con­ferred with the na­tion­al ho­n­our of Or­der of Dis­tinc­tion (Com­man­der Class) by the Ja­maica gov­ern­ment.

Fran­cis coached Thomp­son-Her­ah for all her his­to­ry-mak­ing ca­reer in which she won dou­ble sprint gold medals in the 100 and 200 me­tres at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and this year’s resched­uled Tokyo Olympics.

In Tokyo, Thomp­son-Her­ah be­came the first woman to de­fend the 100 me­tres and 200m ti­tles at the same Olympics, and she al­so won gold in the 4×100 re­lay.

She set an Olympic record of 10.61 sec­onds in the fi­nal of the 100 and then set a na­tion­al 200 record of 21.53 secs, the sec­ond-fastest time in his­to­ry, eclips­ing Mer­lene Ottey’s 25-year-old na­tion­al record of 21.64.

Af­ter the Olympics, Thomp­son-Her­ah be­came the first woman to run four le­gal times un­der 10.70 in the 100m, in­clud­ing a per­son­al best of 10.54, a time bet­tered on­ly by five hun­dredths-of-a-sec­ond by de­ceased Amer­i­can track star, Flo­rence Grif­fith-Joyn­er.

Thomp­son-Her­ah al­so end­ed the year on a high note, win­ning the World Ath­let­ics Di­a­mond League 100 ti­tle in Zurich.

CMC