Jamaica closed the 28th Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, yesterday with their second richest medal haul ever.

The bronze medal run by the women’s 4X400m relay team yesterday brought the medal count to five – two gold, one silver and two bronze.

Only the legendary team to the 1952 Helsinki Games which included Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley, George Rhoden and Les Laing can claim superiority in medal quality. They reaped five medals – two gold and three silver.

In terms of numbers, the medal count fell short of the record seven at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia but the Athens team qualified for 13 finals and had four fourth place finishes, underlining the high quality of the performance.

The women qualified for the finals in the 100m, 200m, 100m hurdles, 4x100m relay, 4x400m and the triple jump, while the men qualified for the finals in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 110m hurdles, 400m hurdles, long jump and the decathlon.

Injuries to 2000 Olympic 400m silver medallist Lorraine Fenton, Pan American high jump champion Germaine Mason, and world-leading long jumper Elva Goulbourne had weakened Jamaica’s team to Athens.

Had these athletes been fit and ready, the seven-medal target would almost certainly have been overhauled.

However, Veronica Campbell’s exploits make it the first time since 1952 that Jamaica have won more than one gold medal at an Olympic Games.

The 22 year-old Campbell became only the fifth Jamaican to win an individual Olympic gold medal, after Wint, Rhoden, Donald Quarrie, and Deon Hemmings when she stormed away from the field to win the 200 metres in a personal best 22.05 seconds.

The girl from Clarkstown, Trelawny, and Tayna Lawrence, Sherone Simpson, and Aleen Bailey gave Jamaica a second Olympic relay gold medal and a first Olympic 4x100m relay gold when they decimated the field in a new national record time of 41.73 seconds. Before she landed gold, Campbell took the bronze medal in the 100 metres, sprinting strongly at the end after a slow start.

Long jumper James Beckford, triple jumper Trecia Smith, 110m-hurdler Maurice Wignall and Aleen Bailey in the 200 metres all finished one place shy of the medal podium.

In the case of Beckford, the 1996 Olympic silver medallist, he fell short by just one centimetre, and Wignall failed by one-hundredth of a second.

Jamaica had the distinction of having three finalists in the women’s 100m and the men’s 400m finals.

Campbell, Simpson and Bailey all took their place in the 100m final, while Brandon Simpson, Davian Clarke and Michael Blackwood made their bold attempts in the 400m with Simpson (fifth) finishing best.

Jamaicans had done it twice before.

Juliet Cuthbert, Merlene Ottey and Grace Jackson all ran in the 200m final at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona; and Rhoden, McKenley and Wint featured in the 400m final in 1952.

The 2004 Games was also historic with the participation of not one but two Jamaicans – Claston Bernard and Maurice Smith – in the medal hunt of the decathlon, both scoring over 8,000 points.

On a low note, Jamaica’s men failed to qualify for the 4x400m relay final despite having three representatives in the one-lap final after being disqualified for a lane violation.

In the two previous Olympic Games, the men got the bronze in the mile relay.

Jamaican women mile relay teams have qualified for every Olympic final since 1984.