Camel City Elite Adds Men’s 60m Hurdles Race

Race Includes Olympic Medalists David Oliver, Jason Richardson and Dwight Thomas

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – January 9, 2015 – JDL Fast Track today announced that it is officially adding an elite section of the 60m Hurdles race to be contested at Camel City Elite within the Hilton Garden Innvitational.  The race will include a star-studded field of Olympians and other elite hurdlers, including three Olympic medalists.  The races will occur on Saturday, January 31 at JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, NC.

“This is a race that we have been talking about doing for a few months, but it has only come to fruition in the last few weeks to get everyone’s schedule to work, raise some prize money and get contracts signed,” said JDL Fast Track facility director Craig Longhurst.  “The field we have assembled is of the highest caliber and adds a different element to our meet that already had very strong distance-oriented fields.”

The hurdlers who will be competing for a $1,500 first place purse and a $500 bonus for breaking the facility record includes some of the top hurdlers in the world.  David Oliver, whose name adorns an elite high school meet at JDL Fast Track the week after Camel City, is the reigning World Champion after winning the 110m hurdles event at the 2013 Moscow World Championships.  Oliver, who runs for Nike, was also the 2008 Olympic Bronze medalist. 

Oliver will have strong competition, though, as the 2011 World Champion and 2012 Olympic Silver medalist at 110m hurdles, Jason Richardson, will be competing.  Another of their training partners, Dwight Thomas, will be in the field.  Thomas won an Olympic Gold medal for Jamaica on its 4x100m relay team in Beijing.  The final training partner from the Florida-based group is Caleb Cross, who ran collegiately for Arkansas and was a multiple All-American for the Razorbacks.

“Getting these guys from the same training group to compete is a real treat.  They are probably down in Florida battling each other in practice each day, and they get to come to our facility and put their training to the test against one another,” said Longhurst.  But they won’t be the only elite athletes in the field.

Raleigh native and recent Texas A&M graduate Wayne Davis II will also be stepping into the starting blocks at JDL Fast Track.  Davis was the 2013 NCAA champion at 110m hurdles and competed in the 2012 London Olympics and 2013 Moscow World Championships for Trinidad and Tobago.  Davis made the semi-finals in both of those events.  Rounding out the field is current facility recordholder and member of the 2012 World Indoor team for Jamaica, Eric Keddo.  Keddo’s facility record of 7.73 seconds for the 60m hurdles is all but guaranteed to go down.

Qualifying for the Camel City hurdles race will begin on Friday, with over 50 collegians competing for a spot in the preliminary round to be held Saturday afternoon.  Then, the top 8 from Saturday’s preliminary will advance to the finals, which will be run approximately 3:30pm on Saturday, January 31.

The addition of the Camel City Elite Hurdles brings the count of Olympians scheduled to compete at JDL Fast Track up to eight.  The four Olympic hurdlers join 2012 Olympic Silver medalist Leo Manzano, two-time Olympian Shannon Rowbury and fellow Olympians Morgan Uceny and Geena Gall.

“We are extremely pleased with the fields we have assembled for our meet, and the addition of these hurdlers rounds out an already talented field that, in addition to the Olympians, includes world-class athletes like Will Leer, Phoebe Wright, Brandon Johnson, Tyler Mulder and a slew of others,” said Longhurst.

About Camel City Elite

Camel City Elite is a set of elite races held within the larger college Hilton Garden Innvitational. The Camel City Elite races will be held on Saturday, January 31, 2015. In addition to the hurdles, the races set to be contested include the men’s and women’s 800m, mile and 3000m races.  Camel City Elite will award over $40,000 in  prize money in the seven races contested. 

About JDL Fast Track (www.jdlfasttrack.com)

JDL Fast Track, one of the premier indoor track and field facilities in the southeast, is a privately owned, dedicated indoor track and field facility, that opened in January 2012, houses a 200-meter oval track with a Mondotrack FTX surface—the same surface used at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. JDL Fast Track has current seating capacity of approximately 1,700, with future expansion possibilities more than 3,000 spectators.

JDL Fast Track will also play host to multiple NCAA Division I and Division II conference meets in 2015, as well as serving as the host for the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships and USATF Masters Indoor Track and Field Championships.

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