JAAA boss advocates for shorter track and field meets

PRESIDENT OF the Jamaica Administrative Athletics Association (JAAA), Garth Gayle, will be moving to train local track and field officials to better manage meets held across the island each year, to reduce the time of what are essentially all-day events to approximately six hours.

The idea emanates from the first technical training delegates World Athletics’ seminar, organised by affiliate, North American, Central American and Caribbean Association (NACAC) that Gayle recently attended as the JAAA representative.

According to Gayle, World Athletics contends that the reduction in time of these meets would attract and then keep new athletes and spectators to track and field, which will eventually elevate the sport’s ranking worldwide.

“World Athletics, within its history, has embarked on training of technical officials and at the moment, this is a new programme being launched all over the world. What it does, it gives us control mechanisms based on how we coordinate, how we manage the officials at the various levels.

“It provides, also, an avenue for not only the athletes to compete and to do well, but stadium control, how again the event is being managed to make it not only just a spectacle with athletes’ performances, but how do we capture it to encourage young upcoming sportsmen and women to see track and field as an option and also to bring track and field to a higher ranking within sports in the world. So it’s how to improve on all technical aspects of the staging of a track and field meet,” Gayle said.

Gayle, a World Athletics technical officials Level Two lecturer, indicated that the training of the local cadre of officials started with two sessions before the recent annual ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships (Champs), which took place over five days at the National Stadium.

He stated that more training will be done going into the start of the new track and field season, next year. Annually, development meets usually peter out after Champs, especially for high-school athletes, until January, when events are held each week.

According to Gayle, better-managed meets will benefit all stakeholders, including technical officials, who, ironically, had two major foul-ups during Champs. The first was officials not placing some of the hurdles at the correct height for the Class Four girls’ 70 metres hurdles, and the other was a starting official walking on the track and impeding athletes in the Class One boys’ 800 metres.

“We have competitions, robust competitions as of January each year, and so we do sometimes see events oversubscribed with up to 20 heats in one age division and with multiple events that lead into beyond eight hours of competition,” Gayle said.

“No, that is asking too much for even any official because after five, six hours, we are going to have diminishing returns. Mark you, within the normal work structure, eight hours is recommended in a normal work schedule. So when, for instance, a track and field competition goes way beyond that, that is too much.

“The shorter six-hour meets, I believe, are far better and more manageable. We shouldn’t go over eight hours,” he continued.

job.nelson@gleanerjm.com