Tahesia Harrigan and her coach Sidney Cartwright, who has guided her career. Photo: Dean "The Sportsman" Greenaway

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil—British Virgin Islands sprinter Tahesia Harrigan began her final tune up for the upcoming World Championships in Osaka, Japan, with a fourth place finish in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday.

Harrigan had a time of 11.20 seconds, to finish behind Belgium’s Kim Gevaert’s 11.04 winning time. USA’s Carmelita Jeter and Me’Lisa Barber, were second and third respectively in 11.04 and 11.11 respectively. She avenged earlier losses to the Bahamas’ Debbie Ferguson and Brianna Glenn. Today, she competes in Thessaloníki, Greece, before shutting down to train for Worlds, which run from Aug 25-Sept 2.

After she narrowly missed a medal with a fourth place finish in last week’s Pan Am Games 100 meter dash, her coach Sidney Cartwright said she would run the first two of three scheduled meet, scrap a third on Aug. 12, in favor of preparing for Worlds, where the goal is an elite eight finish.

“We will evaluate what happened at Pan Ams, go back to the drawing board, train for a couple weeks, regroup and make a run at the World Championships,” Cartwright said. “And our goal at the World Championships is to be in the final. It will be a much tougher task there, but, it’s our ultimate goal to get into the elite eight.”

When asked what his focus will be on in preparing Harrigan to make that run at the elite eight, Cartwright noted that she has already beaten quite a bit of the European athletes, but that is not where the pressure lies. The challenge, he said, will come from the Americas, with the Jamaicans, Bahamians, United States and everyone else in this region. He said that’s where the greatest force of competition will truly come from, with one or two exceptional European athletes.

“We have competed against a lot of the people we will see in the World Championships and we have beaten quite a bit of them before,” he noted. “It’s now about staying within ourselves, stay poised, do what you have been taught to do, then trust the entire race.”