Veronica Campbell Brown
Veronica Campbell Brown
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Veronica Campbell Brown

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Veronica Campbell Brown

Veronica Campbell Brown CD (née Campbell; born 15 May 1982) is a Jamaican retired track and field sprinter, who specialized in the 100 and 200 meters. An eight-time Olympic medalist, she is the second of three women in history to win two consecutive Olympic 200 m gold medals, after Bärbel Wöckel of Germany and compatriot Elaine Thompson-Herah. Campbell-Brown is one of only eleven athletes to win World Championship titles at the youth, junior, and senior levels of an athletic event.

She holds personal bests of 10.76 seconds for the 100 m and 21.74 seconds for the 200 m. She was the 100 m gold medallist at the 2007 World Championships in Athletics and the 200 m gold medallist at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics. She has also won seven silver medals and one bronze medal in her career at the World Championships in Athletics. Over 60 metres, she is a two-time champion at the IAAF World Indoor Championships.

Campbell was born to Cecil Campbell and Pamela Bailey in Clarks Town, Trelawny, Jamaica, on 15 May 1982. She has five brothers and four sisters and attended Troy Primary and Vere Technical High School in Clarendon before pursuing higher education in the United States at the University of Arkansas.[citation needed]

In 1999, she won two gold medals, the 100 m and 4 × 100 m relay at the inaugural IAAF World Youth Championships. The following year, she became the first female to win the sprint double at the IAAF World Junior Championships. She took the 100 m in 11.12 s (which was a championship record at the time) and the 200 m in 22.87 s. At the 2000 Olympic Games, she ran the second leg on the silver medal winning 4 × 100 m relay team. In 2001, she was awarded the Austin Sealy Trophy for the most outstanding athlete of the 2001 CARIFTA Games. That year, she won 3 gold medals (100 m, 200 m, and 4 × 100 m relay) in the junior (U-20) category.[citation needed]

Campbell attended Barton County Community College in Great Bend, Kansas, where she set several records and won many titles, including four national junior college titles in the 60, 100 and 200 metres both indoors and outdoors. She holds the current record for Barton County CC in the outdoor 100 m and 200 m. Campbell also excelled academically, earning an associate degree from Barton County in 2002 with a 3.8 grade average. She later attended the University of Arkansas, where she stood out as a sprint star in a programme dominated by long-distance runners.

At 18 years old, Campbell-Brown won her first Olympic medal. She competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics in the 4 × 100m relay along with Tayna Lawrence, Beverly McDonald, Merlene Frazer and sprint veteran and Olympic legend, Merlene Ottey where the team finished second in the finals in a time of 42.13 seconds behind Caribbean neighbors, Bahamas. Campbell Brown had shown herself to be a promising athlete as a junior, having won at the junior level and at Jamaica's yearly Boys and Girls Championship for her high school, Vere Technical High. The Championship has been credited as the engineer behind Jamaica's success on the Track and Field World stage.

At the age of 22, Campbell-Brown represented Jamaica at the 2004 Athens Olympics. She competed in both the 100 m and 200 m. In the finals of the 100 m, she placed third. Campbell Brown later competed in the 200 m finals, a race American Allyson Felix was favored to win. VCB went on to decimate the field in the 200 m finals. She ran a blistering curve and held her form down the final stretch to become the first Jamaican and Caribbean woman in the history of the Olympic games to win a sprint Olympic title. A visibly emotional Campbell Brown was brought to tears at the medal ceremony as her national anthem was played in the stadium and flag hoisted.

Campbell-Brown then teamed up with Aleen Bailey, Tayna Lawrence, and Sherone Simpson in the finals of the 4 × 100 m. VCB ran a scintillating anchor leg as Jamaica went on to win the women's 4 × 100 m. Jamaica created history as it was the first time Jamaica had won the 4 × 100 m relay at the Olympics.

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