Looking forward to progress in women’s 4x100m

When the Central Hurdles and Relays (CHR) gets started at G. C. Foster College today, the 2024 track and field season will enter a new phase. It’s relay season. Based on the sprinters living and training in Jamaica, fans could be in for a treat.

The CHR, the Milo Western Relays, set for February 10, and the Gibson McCook Relays, scheduled for February 24, offer much more than relays. Athletes can test themselves in a wide range of individual events on the track and in the field. Still, the relays hold centrestage.

Another big meet with a substantial relay programme is the Camperdown Classic, set also for February 10.

One relay that deserves some focus is the women’s 4x100 metres. Edwin Allen High School holds the Boys and Girls’ Championships and the Gibson-McCook Relays records in Class One, Two and Three and the Western Relays Class Two record. With Serena Cole, Tina Clayton and Tia Clayton virtually ever present, Edwin Allen’s fastest two times are 43.28 seconds at home and 43.18 at the 2022 Penn Relays.

In addition, that terrific trio helped Jamaica to three world under-20 records.

Why does this matter? Cole, Tina and Tia are all at the MVP Track Club these days, training with big meet relay gold medal winners Natasha Morrison, Jonielle Smith, and Shericka Jackson.

Last week Tia and Tina showed promising form over the 60m with times of 7.22 and 7.27 seconds, respectively.

Times are one thing. Making the team more adaptable is quite another. For convenience, the first-leg runner carries the baton in the right hand, and delivers it to the second leg runner’s left. The third-leg runner carries it in the right hand and delivers it to the anchor leg runner’s left. That’s where 200m world champion Jackson prefers to be so she can receive the baton in her left hand. Relay season might be a good time to give her some experience in the third leg given her speed on the curve in the 200m.

That might give Jamaica a little more flexibility with regard to Jackson’s running position when the team goes to Paris this summer to defend the Olympic title Briana Williams, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce and Jackson won gloriously in 2021. That’s a small matter but hopefully, the domestic relay circuit, the Penn Relays, the World Relays and a post-Nationals mini-relay camp and race will give our female and male relay teams every possible advantage.

For next year, the CHR, Western Relays and Gibson-McCook should join forces and convince a sponsor to offer cash prizes for the men’s and women’s 4x100m. I can see Racers Track Club, MVP, Elite Performance, SprinTec and perhaps Swept Track Club providing fans at all three meets with a brilliant spectacle on the men’s side and MVP, SprinTec and maybe Elite, with Fraser-Pryce and Kerrica Hill, speeding among the women.

For now, I’m looking forward to the entire domestic relay season. In particular, I’m looking forward to progress in the women’s 4x100m.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at trackside since 1980.