Paris 2024 Olympics: Team Jamaica target 15 medals

By the time track and field competition begins in Paris at the 2024 Olympics, 21 years will have passed since the last global championships in the French capital. Those were the World Athletics Championships of Kim Collins, Hicham El Guerrouj, Virgilius Alekna, Carolina Kluft, Tirunesh Dibaba, and Ana Guevara. Jamaica won four silvers and two bronze medals there but in 2024, expectations will be much higher.

The efficacy of the starting mechanism was a pockmark and in one 100 metres heat, jocular American Jon Drummond and the emerging Asafa Powell were both disqualified. Drummond protested by laying on the track for what seemed like hours, grumbling, “I did not move”.

That aside, Jamaica had a good showing with the men’s 4x400m team, long jumper James Beckford, 400m star Lorraine Fenton, and 100m hurdler Brigitte Foster winning silver and Michael Blackwood, then the Commonwealth 400m champion, and the women’s 4x400m collecting bronze medals.

For all that, the 2024 Olympic team could be at least twice as strong as the 2003 World Championships team. In Budapest, Jamaica took three gold in a total of 13 medals and since 2003, it has been customary for the Jamaica medal count to reach double figures.

It isn’t too much of a flight of fancy to see that total as 15. With the world-leading mark of 17.87m and the best jump in qualifying, Jaydon Hibbert got injured on the runway in the final, and world-leading 110m hurdler Rasheed Broadbell tumbled unexpectedly in his first-round race.

I can see medals for the improving Lamara Distin in the high jump. She moved up from ninth at the 2022 Worlds to fourth in 2023. Similarly, Oblique Seville moved forward from an isolated fourth-place finish in 2022 to fourth with the same time – 9.88 seconds – as the silver and bronze medal winners.

So 15 medals are within reach. It will be harder to match the seven gold medal hauls produced at the 2009 and 2015 World Championships but not impossible. Shericka Jackson has a shot at the Olympic gold medal in both sprints and by then, a healthy Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and a rejuvenated Elaine Thompson Herah would be gunning for gold too. Baton practice would sharpen our 4x100m teams and better luck for Hibbert and our male sprint hurdlers might bear golden fruit too.

Paris is a storied city with a rich history and Jamaica has some history there in athletics. With some preparation, more could be in store in the city with the Eiffel Tower.