Budapest 2023 points to great future for Jamaica’s track and field

WITH THE World Athletics Championships as the centrepiece of the 2023 season, Jamaicans expected its athletics team to shine. They weren’t disappointed.

The team garnered 12 medals, seven for the women and five for the men. Among them were three gold medals. One was a near certainty while the other two gold were shockers few would have predicted before the world journeyed to Budapest, Hungary.

Shericka Jackson provided the certainty.

After a third straight 2023 loss to American Sha’Carri Richardson in the 100 metres, Jackson defended her 200-metre title majestically. Super on the curve and strong in the straight, Jackson crossed the finish line in 21.41, just seven-hundredth of a second away from the world record.

It was no surprise.

Jackson hadn’t lost a 200-metre race since May 2022.

By contrast, her fellow Jamaica gold medallists, Danielle Williams and Antonio Watson, both lost at the National Championships.

However, 2015 world champion Williams took the 100-metre hurdles in 12.43 seconds – the only 2023 best recorded in the final.

For his part, Watson laid down a 400-metre benchmark of 44.13 seconds in the semi and his second-best time – 44.22 – in the final.

Both made history on the same day, August 24.

Watson is the first Jamaican to win a global 400-metre title since 1983, while Williams is the first from our shores, male or female, to win two gold medals in the hurdles.

The fireworks started five months earlier.

In March, 2023 World Under-20 triple jump winner Jaydon Hibbert blasted the age group indoor world record out to 17.54 metres and later in the month, Boys and Girls’ Championships unveiled the potential of a new generation. Coached by the diligent Corey Bennett, Hydel High School survived a topsy-turvy thriller to win its first Girls Championships title while Kingston College won the boys’ title going away.

Delano Kennedy and Rickiann Russell sparkled in the 400 metres. Cedricka Williams and Abigail Martin swapped the discus record and in the boys’ Class 2 age category, Shaquain Gordon zoomed the 100/110m hurdles double. Best of all, on Champs Wednesday, Alana Reid of Hydel and KC captain Bouwahgjie Nkrume, respectively, became the first Jamaican juniors to achieve sub-11 and sub-10 100-metre times.

Reid dashed 10.92 and despite looking to his right for the last 40 metres, Nkrumie clocked 9.99.

A week later, under chilly and damp conditions at the Carifta Games in The Bahamas, Nkrumie strained a hamstring and never regained top form.

Jamaica dominated those Carifta Games with a 78-medal haul.

Leading the charge was Roshawn Clarke, who won the 400 hurdles in 49.92 seconds.

Stunningly, the lanky 19-year-old improved all the way to a world under-20 record-equalling time of 47.85 seconds at the Nationals and again to 47.34 – a national senior record – in the Budapest semifinals.

SUCCUMBED TO AN INJURY

Hibbert was in Budapest too, after winning the NCAA indoor and outdoor titles for the University of Arkansas, and bounding 17.87 metres, just five centimetres off the national senior record. He had the longest jump in Budapest too, 17.70 in qualifying but succumbed to an injury in the first round of the final. It was a tragedy.

Far happier was Jamaica’s performance in the men’s long jump. Wayne Pinnock, 2019 World Champion Tajay Gayle and NCAA winner Carey McLeod went two-three-four and Lamara Distin made her second straight women’s high jump final, finishing fifth.

There were more signs that Jamaica is becoming a field event powerhouse. Both national shot put records were broken, thanks to Danniel Thomas-Dodd booming 19.77 and newcomer Rajindra Campbell producing a 22.22-metre monster. Both reached their respective Budapest finals.

In the discus, Roje Stona, Fedrick Dacres and Traves Smikle occupied spots in the 2023 top 10 with Dacres and Smikle advancing to the World final.

Finally, Shanieka Ricketts missed her bid for a third consecutive World triple jump medal but her labours weren’t in vain.

After Budapest, she set a new career best of 15.03 and put the elusive 15-metre barrier behind her after years of trying.

The ongoing national lament about the men’s sprints softened. Oblique Seville finished fourth in the 100 for the second World Championships in a row, a fingernail away from the bronze and had another Jamaican, Ryiem Forde, eighth. Jamaica hadn’t placed two men in the 100 final since 2017 when Usain Bolt was third and Yohan Blake was fourth.

Then Ackeem Blake, Seville, Forde and Rohan Watson won the bronze medal in the 4x100. The average age of this quartet in Budapest was just 22.

The year ended with bad news.

First, Olympic hurdler Ronald Levy returned a positive doping test, and second, Olympic and World 400 finalist Chris Taylor was punished for allegedly avoiding a test. Both men insist on their innocence.

Taylor is scheduled to return to competition in 2025.

Despite those developments, 2023 was a fine year for Jamaica. The Budapest team had veterans like 100 bronze medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Williams and Ricketts leading by example, and teenaged newcomers like Hibbert and Clarke. First-time finalists included Forde, Campbell and 21-year-old 100-metre hurdler Ackera Nugent.

All of them promise much for the future.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at trackside since 1980.