Hubert Lawrence | Jamaica’s return to Tokyo will be interesting

Jamaica went to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 with a team so young that it included three high-school student athletes: Una Morris, Rupert Hoilette, and Neville Myton. The team performed well and produced several firsts in the nation’s sporting history. However, no medals were won.

Morris, a super sprinter from Kingston Technical, sprinted to several national records in the 200m and placed fourth in the final, at age 17. Even now, it remains the supreme performance by a Jamaican Under-20 athlete.

The long-legged Morris clocked 23.5 seconds in the final, which doesn’t seem remarkable now but was done on a dirt track burnt to cinders in the last Olympics before the introduction of synthetic running surfaces. If she were running on the tracks we have today, there’s no telling how fast she would go.

Famed for excellence in the 4x400m relay, Jamaica made a significant advance in the shorter relay, the 4x100m, with Pablo McNeil, Patrick Robinson, Lindy Headley, and Dennis Johnson placing fourth. Only a hesitant last baton place and a blazing anchor by American 100m champion Bob Hayes denied Jamaica a medal.

Heads high

Morris and the men’s 4x100m team missed the podium but held their heads high as they had produced the nation’s highest achievements in their respective events.

The Jamaican team that goes to Tokyo next July should make amends and more. All things being equal, our team should arrive in the Land of the Rising Sun with reigning Olympic champions Omar McLeod and Elaine Thompson and 2019 World Champions Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Tajay Gayle as leaders of a team with rounded capabilities. Though the incomparable Usain Bolt, the six-time individual Olympic gold-medal winner, is retired, the outlook is bright.

In addition, the best of our junior athletes, 2018 World Under-20 sprint champion Briana Williams, has shown that she is ready to follow in the footsteps of Morris and Nikole Mitchell, who reached the 1993 World 100m final while still in high school. Her arrival comes at the right time since the ‘Mommy Rocket’ has already informed us of her plan to depart when this cycle of championships ends with the 2021 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

As it was with Bolt, it will be hard to let her go.

It will be interesting to see if Jamaicans begin to fall in love with the field events. Gayle and his fellow 2019 World Championships medal winners, Fedrick Dacres, Shanieka Ricketts, and Danniel Thomas-Dodd, share a congenial Jamaican charm and the toughness to battle our nonchalance about non-sprints. The jumping and throwing disciplines carry a sense of intrigue because the contest ebbs and flows for longer than the longest track event and can be won with one big effort.

Champ in the making

It’s time we took those events to heart. During the World Championships, fans seemed to watch Gayle’s duel with Juan Miguel Echevarría the way we once watched champion boxer Michael McCallum. The knockout came in round four with a national long jump record 8.69m. If he continues like that and reaches the world-record potential his MVP Track Club coach, Stephen Francis, has hinted at, Gayle might satisfy the Jamaican thirst to have a champion to boast about as we still do about Bolt.

From here, Tokyo looks very inviting. The team should have an ideal mix of proven veterans like Fraser-Pryce, mature champions like McLeod, and new leaders like Gayle. Add a pain-free season for Thompson, and the 2020 Olympics should be a very good meet to watch.

Hubert Lawrence has scrutinised local and international athletics since 1980.