Millrose Games to feature US-Jamaica Challenge

Reigning women’s 200m Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica will compete at next month’s Millrose Games as part of a “USA versus Jamaica Challenge”, organisers announ-ced yesterday.

The 104th edition of the famed indoor athletics event at Madison Square Garden will be the first with such a matchup as the Americans try to answer the challenge thrown down by Jamaican sprinters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Campbell-Brown is the reigning 60m indoor world champion and a two-time Olympic 200m gold medalist. She also captured the 2007 world 100m crown.

Three Americans and three Jamaicans will race in both the men’s and women’s 60m events with points given by place and scores combined. No other entrants in either event were announced.

Bernard Lagat, a 36-year-old American standout who won his eighth Millrose mile title last season, will face 23-year-old Ethiopian Deresse Mekonnen, the 2008 and 2010 world indoor champion who was second to Lagat in the mile at the 2009 outdoor worlds.