Letter of The Day | Fix this, JOA and JAAA

THE EDITOR, Madam:

What’s going on in the Jamaican camp at the Paris Olympics 2024?

The perennial kas-kas between the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA), Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) and the coaches was repeated again this year. But the lack of coordination and preparedness, both at pre-Olympic camp and in the Olympic Village, with unsatisfactory accommodation for the athletes, incomplete roster, failure to plan properly for reserve/alternate athletes and inadvertently leaving off our sole hammer-thrower from the delegation, have ratcheted up the incompetence to a whole new level!

From as far back as the XX Olympiad in Munich (in which I participated from the German organisation side as an Olympic hostess assigned to the Jamaican team), I have watched with a mixture of consternation and disgust the craven one-upmanship of our Olympic officials versus the athletes. At the Munich Olympics you would think the officials were on a holiday trip than a working mission, as the team was heavily stacked with ‘chiefs’ in comparison to the working ‘Indians’.

I recall that the Chef de Mission did not even know the names of the athletes. The athletes felt the disdain and reacted to it, thereby affecting negatively the morale in the camp.

The fact that top coaches like Glen Mills could not be accommodated on the Jamaican contingent to Paris is nothing new; but why, oh why, must we have on every single such overseas engagement the quarrelling between the JAAA, the coaches and the JOA?

We’ve been at this for too long not to get things sorted and running as efficiently as the staging of Champs. It can be done. Our athletes deserve better. Jamaica deserves better.

Our prowess in track and field is not simply ‘sport’; it is a significant part of Jamaica’s brand as a nation, known to punch way above its body weight.

I am not suggesting that our government should become involved in ensuring that the organising of team missions to international sporting events be improved. God forbid! There is enough politics in sports already.

The prevalence of social media today with swirling gossip and outright falsehoods being spread further complicates the matter.

Come on JOA and JAAA, fix this!

CECILE CLAYTON