Jamaica has been on such a cold streak in Paris, that it’s fair to wonder whether the country is planning for the Winter Olympics. In place of its usual dominance in sprinting, it’s been one disappointment after another.
The misfortune kicked off in June with Elaine Thompson-Herah, the fastest woman alive, injuring her achilles and losing out on a chance to challenge for golds in the 100m and 200m for the third straight Olympics. Then, during the Games themselves, Shericka Jackson, Thompson-Herah’s heir apparent, withdrew from the 100m and 200m with an undisclosed injury, a shock development that drastically changed the complexion of both races. “My 2024 Olympic dream has been shattered,” the three-time medalist wrote in a silence-breaking Instagram post on Friday.
Without those two, Jamaica’s women’s sprint hopes were shunted on to Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the most decorated 100m runner in history. But that was until Stade de France bouncers turned away Fraser-Pryce at the gate just before her 100m semi-final in a Cannes-level case of entitled gatekeeping that also left out Sha’Carri Richardson. The lockout was reportedly due to the pair arriving at the stadium by themselves on foot and not aboard an official bus from the Olympic Village. While Richardson was able to shake off the incident on the way to claiming silver in the 100m, Fraser-Pryce pulled out of that event, citing injury, and the 4x100m, effectively ending her Olympic swan song on the sourest of notes.
The picture on the men’s side was equally depressing for Jamaican fans. In the 100m, Jamaica saw its hopes of reclaiming gold evaporate in a photo-finish. Just twelve-hundredths of a second separated Jamaica’s Oblique Seville, a medal sleeper who finished last and was nursing a groin injury, from the leaders. Kishane Thompson, who set this year’s fastest 100m time at Jamaica’s national meet in June, finished five-thousandths of a second behind world champion, Noah Lyles. The result, decided when the American’s chest crossed the line first, roiled Jamaicans across the diaspora who had already taken exception to Lyles bigging up himself as the fastest man on the planet. “Kinda silly that a foot race isn’t decided by feet,” was how one X user captioned a bird’s-eye angle of the finish that could be interpreted as more favorable to Thompson. Even Leigh Diffey, on the call for NBC in the US, got the winner wrong and celebrated the Jamaican – who, according to coach Stephen Francis, competed despite suffering a hamstring injury in the semi-final.
Although Thompson didn’t compete in the 200m, leaving Jamaica without a runner in the men’s final, he did return for the 4x100m. But his furious anchor leg wasn’t enough to overcome two botched handoffs that doomed the team to a fourth-place finish – marking the first time Jamaica failed to make the men’s relay final in 20 years. In the end, Rasheed Broadbell was the only Jamaican runner other than Thompson to come through on the track, taking bronze in the 110m hurdles. “The Olympics have been very weird,” said Francis, the coach responsible for much of Jamaica’s international sprinting prosperity over the past 20 years. “It’s certainly the worst I’ve ever been to.” And he was speaking as much to his nation’s sprint performance as to the manner in which he believes the event has been organized.
There’s no doubt it was an Olympic rock bottom for an island nation of fewer than three million with an incredible knack for punching above its weight at the Games. Heading into Paris, Jamaica had won a staggering 82 Olympic medals since the country first entered the Games in 1948. Time trial cyclist David Weller is the only Jamaican Olympian to medal in a sport other than track and field – not just the country’s official pastime, but an onramp into opportunities for better schooling and professional prospects around the world. Champs, the country’s raucous national high school meet, is thickly attended by US college programs and corporate sponsors. Olympic champions Donovan Bailey and Sanya Richards Ross are two in a slew of Jamaica-born athletes who have achieved glory while racing under another country’s flag – not that it stops Jamaican fans from claiming them anyway.
On the world stage, Jamaica’s prowess on the track has accorded the country international standing in the sport on par with the United States, in an athletic struggle that stretches back to the 1960s. “That rivalry is real,” US sprinting legend Michael Johnson told the Washington Post last month. “Jamaican Twitter [is] not for the faint of heart. They are a very proud, a very proud nation when it comes to sprinting.”
No athlete had Jamaicans swaggering quite like Usain Bolt, the showman who smashed every record imaginable while pretty much owning the track for three Olympic cycles. At the same time, Fraser-Pryce and Veronica Campbell Brown were proving the Jamaican women could also dominate.
But with Bolt retired and Fraser-Pryce on her way, Jamaica’s track identity is less clear. Thompson and Seville, Olympic debutants who ran hobbled (albeit not as hobbled as the Covid-addled Lyles), project as future superstars. (“We are back in the game,” retired Olympic relay champion Asafa Powell declared after the 100m final, the Jamaican men’s first Olympic podium since the Rio Games.) But the US men netted a haul of sprinting medals this year with athletes who would appear to be entering their primes. On the women’s side, Richardson and compatriot Gabby Thomas have powered another American resurgence. While they legged to gold in Friday’s 4x100m relay, Jamaica’s B-team finished fifth. Going into the final day of track and field on Saturday, Jamaica had zero sprint golds after winning 10 total in Tokyo and Rio combined.
But it isn’t just those results that have made these Olympics so “weird” for Jamaica. No, what’s made it truly weird is that all the country’s medals save Thompson’s and Broadbell’s have come in field events. Rojé Stona – a 6ft 7in, 263-pounder who has tried out with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints despite never having played American football – has won the country’s only gold so far, in the discus; just as stunning, he beat out two more Jamaicans in the final. Rajindra Campbell took bronze in the shot put after failing to register a legal throw in the finals of the 2023 world championships in Budapest. Wayne Pinnock, a double US collegiate champion, claimed silver in the long jump. Shanieka Ricketts, another US double college champion, grabbed a silver of her own in the triple jump. Altogether, field athletes carried the day, accounting for four of Jamaica’s six medals so far with three medals still possible this weekend, not least in the women’s 4x400m – which features Tokyo bronze medalist Junelle Bromfield. Jamaica’s surprise success in the field is wholly unprecedented.
Danniel Thomas-Dodd nearly joined the party, coming up just shy of making the finals for the women’s shot put. Afterwards, she railed against her country’s sports governing bodies (who, critics argue, have profited from Jamaica’s track record despite their selective support of athletes) for denying Olympic credentials to her coach – who, Thomas-Dodd said, she hadn’t seen for nearly three weeks. “You’re talking about 365 days of training just gone down the drain,” she told the Caribbean outlet SportsMax. “It’s very frustrating dealing with [Jamaica Olympic Association] and [Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association] because these people don’t care about field events in Jamaica. If they did, they would make sure we have everything we need.”
She went on: “Most of the medals that we’ve gotten so far at these Games have come from the field events, and [field athletes] are the most marginalized group in Jamaican track and field. It’s time for them to stop and really reflect on what they are doing to us.”
These Olympics were very nearly an unmitigated disaster for Jamaica – suddenly on the back foot without Bolt padding their results, and back under pressure from a US federation that is finally reaping dividends from their decade-long investment in sprints. Instead there’s hardware coming home from field stars in spite of the country’s faltering track performances. Here now is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for one of the pluckiest Olympic nations to diversify its track and field holdings. Jamaica’s sporting directors should probably make the most of this moment before the rest of the world passes them by and Jamaica’s luck really runs out.
