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Busy season for young track and field athletes

Published:Sunday | January 9, 2022 | 12:14 AMRaymond Graham - Gleaner Writer
Members of the Jamaican quartet who clocked a World Under-20 record 42.94 seconds in the women’s 4x100m final on the last day of the World Under-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, last summer. From left are: Serena Cole, Tina Clayton, Kerrica Hill, and
© Dan Vernon for World Athletics
Members of the Jamaican quartet who clocked a World Under-20 record 42.94 seconds in the women’s 4x100m final on the last day of the World Under-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, last summer. From left are: Serena Cole, Tina Clayton, Kerrica Hill, and Tia Clayton.

WHEN THE 2022 track and field season began yesterday with the staging of the PureWater/R. Danny Williams Invitational Meet at the Ashenheim Stadium, Jamaica College, it will mark the start of a busy season for the country’s junior athletes, who will be involved in two major meets later in the year with the staging of the Carifta Games in April and the World Under-20 Championships in August.

After the athletes compete in the popular GraceKennedy ISSA Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships from April 5-9 inside the National Stadium, they will have to turn around quickly because the following week marks the start of the Carifta Games at the same venue.

It will be the first time in 11 years that the country, which has dominated these Championships, will be the host. Montego Bay hosted the games in 2011 and it has been staged in Kingston on six other occasions.

Both the ISSA Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships and the Carifta Games will be a dress rehearsal for the young athletes, who will participate at the World Under-20 Championships to be held in Cali, Colombia from August 2-7.

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In Colombia, the likes of World Under-20 champion Tina Clayton and her world record-breaking 4x100 metres team members and schoolmates at Edwin Allen High , twin sister Tia and Serena Cole, as well as Hydel High’s Kerrica Hill, will be on show.

For the next several weeks, bearing in mind the nature of the season, there should be fireworks from the young athletes as they vie for places at the World Under-20s. The country will be hoping to better its performance in Nairobi, Kenya last summer where some 11 medals were won. The three gold, six silver and two bronze medals meant Jamaicans ended fifth on the medal table.

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