Uncool runnings: Jamaica’s powerhouse sprint team fizzles at Olympics
Jamaica has been so cold in Paris that it is fair to wonder if the country is preparing for the Winter Olympics. Instead of its usual dominance in sprinting, it has been one disappointment after another.
The misfortune began in June when Elaine Thompson-Herah, the fastest woman in the world, injured her Achilles tendon and missed out on a third consecutive gold medal in the 100m and 200m. Then, during the Games themselves, Shericka Jackson, Thompson-Herah’s heir apparent, withdrew from the 100m and 200m with an undisclosed injury, a shocking development that drastically changed the face of both races. “My 2024 Olympic dream has been shattered,” the three-time medalist wrote in a silent Instagram post on Friday.
Without the pair, Jamaica’s women’s sprint hopes shifted to Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the most decorated 100m runner in history. But that was until Stade de France bouncers sent Fraser-Pryce packing just before her 100m semi-final in a Cannes-style case of self-congratulatory gatekeeping that also left Sha’Carri Richardson in the cold. The ejection was reportedly due to the pair arriving at the stadium on foot rather than on an official Olympic Village bus. While Richardson shrugged off the incident en route to silver in the 100m, Fraser-Pryce withdrew from that event, citing injury, and the 4x100m, ending her Olympic swansong on the sourest of notes.
The men’s picture was equally depressing for Jamaican fans. In the 100m, Jamaica saw its hopes of regaining 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 the fastest 100m time at this year’s Jamaican 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 finish line first, upset Jamaicans in the diaspora who had already taken issue with Lyles grow bigger himself as the fastest man on the planet. “Pretty stupid that a running race isn’t decided by feet,” was how one X user captioned a bird’s-eye view of the finish line that could have been interpreted more favorably for Thompson. Even Leigh Diffey, reporting for NBC in the US, got the winner wrong, celebrating the Jamaican – who coach Stephen Francis said competed despite a hamstring injury in the semi-finals.
Although Thompson did not compete in the 200m, leaving Jamaica without a runner in the men’s final, he returned for the 4x100m. But his ferocious anchor leg was not enough to overcome two botched handoffs that condemned the team to a fourth-place finish – the first time in 20 years that Jamaica has failed to reach the men’s relay final. Ultimately, Rasheed Broadbell was the only Jamaican runner other than Thompson to make it through the track, taking bronze in the 110m hurdles. “The Olympics have been very strange,” said Francis, the coach responsible for much of Jamaica’s international sprint success over the past 20 years. “It’s absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” And he was talking as much about his country’s sprinting record as he was about the way he thinks the event has been run.
There’s no doubt that this was an Olympic low for an island nation of less than three million people and an incredible talent for punching above its weight at the Games. Heading into Paris, Jamaica had won a staggering 82 Olympic medals since it first competed in the Games in 1948. Time-trialist David Weller is the only Jamaican Olympian to have won a medal in a sport other than track and field – not only the country’s official pastime but also a gateway to better education and professional opportunities around the world. Champs, the country’s raucous national high school competition, is heavily attended by American college programs and corporate sponsors. Olympic champions Donovan Bailey and Sanya Richards Ross are two of a string of Jamaican-born athletes who have achieved glory while racing under the flag of another country – not that that’s stopped Jamaican fans from claiming them anyway.
On the world stage, Jamaica’s prowess on the track has given the country an international status in the sport equal to the United States, in an athletic competition that dates back to the 1960s. “That rivalry is real,” American sprint legend Michael Johnson told the Washington Post last month. “Jamaican Twitter [is] not for the faint of heart. They are a very proud, very proud nation when it comes to sprinting.”
No athlete had the Jamaican swagger of Usain Bolt, the showman who broke every record imaginable and held the track three times in a row. At the same time, Fraser-Pryce and Veronica Campbell Brown proved that Jamaican women could dominate too.
But with Bolt retired and Fraser-Pryce on the way, the identity of Jamaica’s track and field is less clear. Thompson and Seville, Olympic debutants who ran with a disability (though not as disabled as the Covid-stricken Lyles), are seen as future superstars. (“We’re back in the game,” retired Olympic relay champion Asafa Powell declared after the 100m final, the first Olympic podium for Jamaica’s men since the Rio Games.) But the U.S. men have taken home a slew of sprint medals this year, with athletes who appeared to be in their prime. On the women’s side, Richardson and compatriot Gabby Thomas have fueled another American resurgence. While they won gold in the 4x100m relay on Friday, Jamaica’s B team finished fifth. Going into Saturday’s final day of track and field, Jamaica had zero sprint golds, having won a combined 10 in Tokyo and Rio.
But it’s not just those results that have made this Olympics so “weird” for Jamaica. No, what’s really weird is that all of the country’s medals, bar Thompson’s and Broadbell’s, have come in field events. Rojé Stona, a 6ft 7in, 263-pounder who tried out for the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints despite never playing football, has won the country’s only gold so far, in the discus; just as stunningly, he beat two other Jamaicans in the final. Rajindra Campbell took bronze in the shot put after failing to register a legal throw in the final of the 2023 world championships in Budapest. Wayne Pinnock, a two-time US collegiate champion, won silver in the long jump. Shanieka Ricketts, another US two-time collegiate champion, took silver in the triple jump herself. All in all, it was the field athletes who won the day, taking home four of Jamaica’s six medals to date. Three more medals are up for grabs this weekend, not least in the women’s 4x400m, with Tokyo bronze medallist Junelle Bromfield leading the way. Jamaica’s surprising success in the field is unprecedented.
Daniel Thomas-Dodd nearly made it to the party, narrowly missing out on the women’s shot put final. She then went on to rail against her country’s sports governing bodies (who, critics say, have profited from Jamaica’s record despite their selective support of athletes) for denying her coach Olympic qualification – whom, Thomas-Dodd said, she hadn’t seen for nearly three weeks. “You’re talking about 365 days of training that have just been for nothing,” she said. told Caribbean outlet SportsMax“It is very frustrating to deal 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 continued: “Most of the medals we’ve won so far at these Games have come from field events, and [field athletes] are the most marginalized group in Jamaican athletics. It is time for them to stop and really think about what they are doing to us.”
This Olympics was almost an unmitigated disaster for Jamaica – suddenly caught off guard without Bolt to polish their record, and once again under pressure from an American federation that is finally reaping the rewards of its decades-long investment in sprints. Instead, hardware from field stars is returning, despite the country’s faltering track record. This is now a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for one of the most courageous Olympic nations to diversify its track and field assets. 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.