So Jamaica, the third winningest country in the history of 4x400m relays (men and women combined) at the Olympics will not have a team representing them at the 2024 edition in Paris, and one has to wonder what exactly led to such a catastrophic failure. Only once in the country’s history before now has this happened, in Mexico 1964. In fact, Jamaica’s first medal in this event (a gold, to boot) is older than the country itself, as it was at the Helsinki edition of the games in 1952 that the team led by an astonishing 44.6 leg by the great Herb Mckenley, won, 10 years before Jamaica gained independence. That team broke a 20 year old world record, and their time of 3:04.04s, all of 72 years old, is faster than one of the times that Jamaica ran in its 3 qualifying attempts. The qualifying period for the upcoming Olympics ran from December 31, 2022 to June 30,2024. To qualify for the Olympics, 14 of 16 spots come via the World athletics relays from April this year, and the other two come via world rankings by times ran during the qualifying period. The times are not really what I have an issue with, because at their best, Jamaica should be capable of a 2:58s clocking, and generally anything under 3 minutes is seen as a top quality time. Jamaica finished just outside the medals at the 2023 world championships in 4th, running 2:59.34s. This team featured world champion Antonio Watson, new world u20 record holder in the 400m hurdles, Roshawn Clarke, Zandrion Barnes and Rusheen McDonald. As luck would have it, the silver medal winners France, also had a disastrous world relays, and thus their time in the final of 2:58.45s was the fastest non automatic qualifying time. Zambia is the other team ahead of Jamaica, with a 2.59.12. Having come 4th with such a time, under normal circumstances that would have been enough to qualify via ranking, but teams who are slower ran their best quartet when it counted and therein lies my first problem.
Is it cockiness? Since this was proposed as the new way to qualify for the Olympics, until the top 14 finishers are the relays were set, all times during the qualifying period didn’t matter, as no one would know what times were the ones on the “bubble” to surpass. As a result, everyone should have sent their absolute best to compete at the world relays. In the past, it had been seen as a way for ‘weaker’ nations to have more opportunities to achieve qualifying times, as back then it was simply the fastest 16 teams over the period who would qualify. Stronger nations such as Jamaica would use it as an opportunity to practice handovers, get races in for rusty runners as it was early in the season, and perhaps give international competition exposure to reserve members of the relay pool that they usually would not get. These teams would still be competitive, because due to their strength in depth and because winning here was not ALL important, a team that would be in the race but come, say 5th in the final was ok, rather than trying to medal due to the aforementioned reasons. All of this changed in 2024 with the new qualifying rules. The only team who can conceivably safely qualify without their A team is the USA, due to their incredible strength in depth, not only due to their quality but just their size. The upper end talent may be comparable, but while your typical elite track nation might have 3-5 men who can run a 400m in 45 seconds or less, the USA probably have 10+ and thus can actually afford to not send their best. If anyone else sends even their 3rd-6th best runners, there will be a noticeable drop off in quality. I’m not sure whether Jamaica thought they were just too good and could afford to send a weaker team, if they somehow forgot or didn’t realize the qualifying change, or if it was a case of the top runners not wanting to compete for whatever reason. I know Antonio Watson has struggled with fitness and injury all season and now after being hurt in the Jamaican trials will miss the Olympics. As far as I am aware, everyone else was and is fit. Another possibility is if the selectors for the team are either lazy or biased. What I mean is that some runners always seem to be in the pool no matter what form they are in. Now, it could be because they are the only ones who always answer the call and this should be commended, as they always want to help their nation when able. However, if this isn’t the case, some people should not be called based on past merit. Demish Gaye and Rusheen McDonald have been key members for the relay pool for almost a decade now, and have world championship finals appearances and the Jamaican national record between them. However, in recent years, their relay performances have left much to be desired, leading to calls from the public for them to be dropped. Men who are capable of 43s and 44s performances have been running their legs in 47s, which to be honest is on par with the greatest women’s legs, meaning they would probably lose a small amount of ground to the likes of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone or Allyson Felix in her prime. Anyone who is familiar with biology should know that a world class male track athlete should be several meters ahead of a world class female athlete, not matching them.
Whatever the reason, a weakened team; the wrong team, went to the Bahamas in April for the world relays. Each relay event had a final. The 8 qualifiers for each event’s final would get a direct ticket to the Olympics. The other 6 spots would come from a “second chance” race, which was run the following day before the finals of each relay and contested amongst the non qualifiers. In Jamaica’s heat, they came third in 3:02.46, just missing out on a place in the final. The only teams to break 3 minutes across all 4 heats were Botswana and South Africa, who both went slightly faster than Jamaica’s time from 2023. This means that Jamaica’s best lineup would have in all likelihood made the final easily (the USA also broke 3 minutes but were disqualified; -they later won their last chance heat on Sunday, again just breaking 3 minutes). Jamaica tried a slightly different lineup on the Sunday and instead fell to 5th in this heat, clocking 3:05.09 and finishing behind the likes of Spain and the Czech Republic. This time as mentioned earlier is slower than Jamaica’s best all of 72 years prior and clearly was not good enough. Of the other 4 relays, Jamaica only made the final in the men’s 4×100. The trend of taking weakened teams thankfully did not harm them fully here, as each other team subsequently qualified on the Sunday in their respective last chance races.
Following on from that world relays horror show, Zambia and France also had poor performances and did not automatically qualify, in fact, in that Sunday heat, Zambia finished 4th to Jamaica’s 5th. They however had a cushion to fall back on and the onus was on Jamaica to better their times by June 30th.
They organized an improved team (but not the best as it was still notably missing the fastest two Jamaicans from the previous year, Watson and Sean Bailey), for a meet in the Bahamas in early June which was seen as their last chance. In a valiant effort, they just dipped under 3:00 but it was still just over half a second too slow. I have no issue with this team of men who answered the call and ran to the best of their ability on such short notice, the issue is that this again was not the country’s best. Were we not taking it seriously? Was the situation not dire enough to pull out all the stops or did we again think any 4 Jamaicans can just show up and run a world class time? Ironically, these men (some of whom did run at the world relays) were overall a stronger selection of athletes and their time would have easily qualified automatically back in April. This failure then resulted in scathing criticism from the Jamaican public, and in particular legendary coach Stephen Francis, who had this to say about JAAA president Garth Gayle in an interview with Sportsmax.TV: “Garth Gayle is a trying man, but he consistently gets letdown by the appointments he makes. Jamaica historically has treated senior athletics as an adjunct to junior athletics, so the same people are there, school principals and their technical committees, making these decisions on issues they know absolutely nothing about.” He then went on to say that the country’s teams were selected on early season times, and not with the best 4-6 runners who would likely be representing the country in July in the Olympics. These elite athletes tend to start their seasons later and as a result would not have had fast enough recorded Season’s bests yet. He then proposed that at the national senior championships from June 27-30, they organize one or two teams of Jamaica’s top 400m runners, pay a team or two from other Caribbean nations for some competition, and have one last relay final in a bid to qualify on the last day. Sensationally, this is exactly what happened, and the 400m events at trials were pushed forward to allow time for the competitors to rest for the 30th. In the 400m final, the top 3 finishers easily broke 45s, and as 45s x 4= 3 minutes flat, this should have in theory meant that should they team up, they would be able to run well under 2:59, never mind 3:00. Now for reasons still seemingly unknown to the public, and only rumors of “x was feeling unwell and y did not show up”, all 3 of the top finishers did not show up to the relay. As a result, the fastest Jamaican quartet again ran just under 3 minutes, and the dream was finally dead for good.
Some have blamed the athletes for being selfish and unpatriotic, and whilst I agree, I first want to echo the sentiments of coach Francis, in that it should not have come to this in the first place. Instead of just simply going by the fastest season’s bests at the time, which were mainly 46 second clockings, 4 men who are known to be capable of running under 3:00 as a quartet should have been selected, as we clearly have quite a few, and the need for our absolute best 4 would not have surfaced, since these improved teams twice ran times that would have qualified at the world relays, when called upon out of desperation.
There is also an air of laziness, selfishness and perhaps even favouritism for some long time stalwarts, but ultimately the JAAA must answer for its incompetence when Jamaica fields finalists in both the 400m and the 400m hurdles, yet somehow won’t even have a team in the heats of the 4x400m relay at the Olympics.