Comment on After the sprinters, Jamaica seeking track and field depth

After the sprinters, Jamaica seeking track and field depth

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The most dominant runner at Jamaica's national track and field championships this summer was not a superstar sprinter like Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake or Veronica Campbell-Brown. Meet the best distance runner in Jamaica — yet unlike Bolt, Blake and the sprint stars, he's far from being a favorite for a medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics this summer. Even after all of Bolt's success and stature as a global superstar, even after Jamaica winning 10 gold medals in the last two Summer Olympics, there's still not enough resources to go around to every discipline in the track and field program. [...] the athletes in the "other" events tend to toil in anonymity, some of Jamaica's national champions unable to even hit the Olympic qualifying standards and earn a spot in Rio. Each of those women had met the Olympic qualifying standard before the national meet, but still needed to finish in the top three there to earn the Olympic berth — and did so despite the surface from which they were throwing from being less-than-ideal. He says there's reason for hope, and he wasn't the only one to say so even after a meet where there was one — that's right, one — person to clear any height in the pole vault championship, no male or female high jumpers able to reach the Olympic standard, yet where the last-place finisher in the men's 5,000 got some of the loudest cheers of the weekend.

 

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