ANGELS, St Catherine — The cream of the crop of Jamaica’s high school and club athletes — led by MVP club and national high school champions Kingston College and Holmwood Technical — will be on show today at the 32nd staging of the Milo Western Relays at the GC Foster College, starting at 10:00 am.

The event will be held outside of western Jamaica for the second year in a row due to the unavailability of the Catherine Hall sports complex where it was held for six years, which has forced the organisers to move the meet to Angels near Spanish Town.

Meet director Ray Harvey said his team is working towards returning the games to Montego Bay since late last year and were only told earlier this year about the venue not been available.

“This has caused us great distress as well as incurred additional costs that we had not budgeted for but despite this we had to continue,” Harvey said.

Over 70 high schools teams from 44 high schools, 18 club/institution teams, 18 primary and 10 prep school teams will take part in the meet that will see eight individual events — 30 relays and four field events — being contested.

There is also an increase in the cash prizes as the organisers have added awards for the high school girls’ 4x400m to the 4x800m Open.

The winners of all four relays will take home $40,000; second place will get $20,000, third place $10,000 and fourth place $5,000.

Dwight Anderson, a former Kingston College and Jamaica quarter-miler from the 1960s, will sponsor the 4x400m which will see a return to two races for the females, one for high schools and another for clubs and institutions.

In its early stagings, there used to be two races, but due to a lack of entries, the organisers had taken a decision to combine the races.

Harvey told the Observer, however, that for the past few years, they had been forced to run up to three races and thus the decision to separate the races again.

Custom Marbles and Design are the sponsor for the girls 4x800m while Milo, the title sponsors, will cover the boys 4x400m.

Additionally, the high schools teams in the 4x400m and 4x800m relays will earn points towards the Milo Junior Grand Prix.

Edwin Allen High girls and Holmwood boys lead the 4x800m section, while Manchester high girls and Munro College boys are in front in the 4x400m event.

Bruce James, president of the MVP club told the Observer yesterday that barring any incidents, all members of his club with the exception of Olympic Games relay gold medallist Nesta Carter will be in action today.

He pointed out, however, that World Championships and Olympic women’s 100m champion Shell-Ann Fraser and relay gold medalist Michael Frater, are both doubtful due to niggling injuries.

MVP will defend titles in six of the eight relays they are entered in today including both men’s and women’s 4x100m club’s/institutions; both 4x200m races; the men’s sprint medley relay and the men’s 4×400 and will seek to retain the women’s 4x400m title they lost to UTech last year.

A number of individual winners will defend their titles today starting with Bellefield High’s record-holder Kemoy Campbell who will be seeking his third straight 3,000m title.