NAS­SAU, Ba­hamas – Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and hosts The Ba­hamas were the on­ly Caribbean na­tions that were able to book teams in­to the Olympics this Ju­ly-Au­gust in Paris, France from the World Ath­let­ics Re­lays, which end­ed on Sun­day.

The Ja­maicans were the most suc­cess­ful, qual­i­fy­ing teams for all but one of the re­lays – the men’s mile re­lay – in the French cap­i­tal af­ter the two-day meet at the Thomas A. Robin­son Sta­di­um, while T&T got in two teams and the Ba­hami­ans on­ly one.

World Ath­let­ics, the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, con­firmed that 14 teams in each of the five re­lay dis­ci­plines con­test­ed – the women’s and men’s 4×100 me­tres and 4×400 me­tres plus the mixed 4×400 me­tres – au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied for places.

Two na­tions – Great Britain & North­ern Ire­land, and the Unit­ed States – each qual­i­fied a full slate of five teams for Paris, while the Ja­maica were among the six – France, Ger­many, Italy, Nige­ria and Poland were the oth­er – that qual­i­fied four each.

While most of the Olympic places have been se­cured, teams still have a chance to qual­i­fy with a fur­ther two places in each dis­ci­pline be­ing award­ed based on top lists dur­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od from De­cem­ber 31, 2022, to June 30 this year.

The Ja­maica men’s 4×100 squad of Bryan Lev­ell, Kadri­an Gold­son, Ryiem Forde, and San­drey Davi­son were the first to qual­i­fy af­ter they clocked 38.50 sec­onds and fin­ished run­ners-up to Cana­da in the third heat of qual­i­fy­ing on Sat­ur­day.

The top two teams in each of the four heats of the re­lays on Sat­ur­day au­to­mat­i­cal­ly booked their places for the Olympics and se­cured spots for their re­spec­tive fi­nals on Sun­day, when prize mon­ey was be­ing of­fered and lane seed­ings for Paris was be­ing se­cured – but Lev­ell, Gold­son, Forde, and Davi­son com­bined for a time of 38.88 secs, and they fin­ished sev­enth in the fi­nal won by the Unit­ed States.

Al­so on Sun­day, both Ja­maica and T&T qual­i­fied for the women’s 4×100 re­lays af­ter fin­ish­ing 1-2 in the sec­ond heat of the sec­ond round of qual­i­fy­ing – but they did not make it to the fi­nal, which was won by the Unit­ed States.

The Ja­maican squad of Jodean Williams, Tia Clay­ton, Re­mona Burchell, and Alana Reid ran 42.74 to win the heat, and the T&T team of Tae­jha Badal, Reese Web­ster, Re­yare Thomas, and Leah Bertrand clocked 43.54.

Ja­maica got their place in the women’s 4×400 re­lays af­ter they won the first heat of the sec­ond round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion when the squad of Charo­kee Young, Ash­ley Williams, Junelle Brom­field, and Roneisha Mc­Gre­gor fin­ished in three min­utes, 28.54 sec­onds.

The Trinidad & To­ba­go quar­tet of Asa Gue­vara, Jereem Richards, Che Lara, and Sha­keem McK­ay had to dig deep to de­fy fast-fin­ish­ing Olympic host na­tion France to grab their place in the men’s 4×400 re­lays.

T&T fin­ished sec­ond be­hind Brazil with a time of 3 mins, 02.39 sec­onds, on­ly five hun­dredths-of-a-sec­ond quick­er than the French in the third heat of the sec­ond round of qual­i­fy­ing.

The com­bi­na­tion of Steve Gar­diner, Sha­nia Adder­ley, Alon­zo Rus­sell, and Shau­nae Miller-Ui­bo brought de­light to the World Re­lays host, Ba­hamas when they ran 3:12.81 and won the first heat in the sec­ond round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 4×400 mixed re­lay.

(CMC)