Do more in Doha! - JAAA president calls for strong showing at 2019 World Championships

DOHA, Qatar:

President of the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) Dr Warren Blake believes it’s important that Jamaica’s athletes turn in a good performance at the World Championships in Doha after the disappointing campaign at the last instalment in London in 2017.

After six days of competition, Jamaica have already bettered their returns from 2017, with two gold and two silver medals secured in Doha, compared to the one gold and three silver medals won in London two years ago.

“There have been a few setbacks, but despite that, things have been going good for Jamaica. We have won two gold and two silver medals already, better than the last World Championships and we are expecting more to come because the athletes have been giving of their best,” Blake said. “We have seen a number of personal best and season best performances, so the athletes have really saved their best for the big event.

“At the last Worlds, we were all expecting to do quite well and it’s like everything that could go wrong went wrong. The weather was too cold, people got hurt and it all affected our medal prospects and people started to say that Jamaica is finished; (Usain) Bolt is retiring and Jamaica is now finished,” he continued.

“But we have a strong programme, it is not a flash in the pan programme and it was not built on Usain Bolt alone, so it’s important to come and show the world that Jamaica’s programme remains strong and that we will still be producing greats,” Blake stated.

Jamaica’s success in the field so far, with Tajay Gayle winning the men’s long jump gold medal and Fedrick Dacres securing silver in the discus event, has been a contrast to the team’s underwhelming showing in the sprint events, particularly the men’s sprints, which saw only Yohan Blake making the men’s 100m, where he failed to medal and no Jamaican making the men’s 200m final. There was also no Jamaican in the women’s 200m final.

Blake said the field success is a result of the JAAA’s investment in the area and said that the association will have to look at ways to improve performances in the sprints at this level, especially among the male sprinters.

“We might not be as strong as we were in the men’s sprints, but we are strong all around. You would note that the federation had concentrated on the field events, planning for the eventuality when we did not have sprint success that we would have success in other areas and we have seen success here in a number of the field events,” Blake said.

“We made investments in the coaches, we sent them to courses to improve their ability to teach field events. Julian Robinson (Dacres’ coach), for instance, has gone away on courses sponsored by the JAAA. We have sent the athletes to whatever meets we can send them to. We have had specific meets aimed at throwing. We had the Big Shot meet and others that are all throws meets. These things never normally happened. Throws used to be a thing you would stick onto a meet that has two hundred 100m races and 200m races and nobody paid any attention to the throws,” Blake shared before speaking to the sprinting shortfall.

“If you note the youngsters at Champs are still running very fast for their age group. The problem has to do with transitioning from being a good youngster to a good senior, so we are going to go back to the drawing board and see how we can affect the programme in a positive way.”