By Robert Taylor, Special to TrackAlerts.com 

I see Yohan Blake is talking about mentally getting over his injury and contending for a medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

 Looking on Blake, I see a well-muscled and powerful athlete; but in my opinion, heavy muscles tend to diminish flexibility. That might not be Blake’s issue, but the fact he had two consecutive years of major injury caused many to speculate on his likelihood of making it back to 2012 level. 

If Blake can get back to his 2011form this would be a great achievement for him. His opener is in the 21+ over a 200m is pedestrian for a world class senior athlete. For someone who ran 19.26 and 19.44 over the 200m before and who wants to contend for an Olympic medal in the next four months, 21 seconds over a 200m should be more like a jog than actually running.

I expect Blake camp to talk with confidence but is this a case of wishful thinking or are they really that confident? After all, last year his coach publicly stated that he was running scared. I would love to see the Blake of the past who would ensure Jamaica a one two punch with his stable mate Usain Bolt. Injury is not an easy thing for an athlete to overcome because of the physical and mental aspect of it. In sprinting where .5 seconds is huge, it is even more challenging. For someone to overcome injury once is bad enough; but to face consecutive years of major injury must create mental hurdles  for an athlete only the extremely mentally strong can overcome. I have to give credit to Blake for coming back with confidence. 

As the season progresses, I will patiently wait to see if Blake has significantly surpassed his last year season’s best. I hope he has progressed to the point where he is one of the world’s top sprinters. Whatever that is, we will see very soon. Blake’s is known to be a hard worker and if hard working is what it takes to recover his past glory; I have no doubt that Blake would make it. I hope he overcome the psychological issues of consecutive years of major injury and regain confidence to go with his body’s ability to recover to the point where he reaches 2012 or even 2011 shape. I wish all goes well and the next time it will be about his tremendous performance and not about past injury issues.

**The views expressed in this article are those of the author (Robert Taylor) and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, trackalerts.com.

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