JAMAICA will send a 15-member team representing the sports of athletics, badminton and swimming to the inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore from August 14-26.

Kendese Nangle, who will also carry the flag in the opening ceremony, as well as Brian Forte, will comprise the two-member swim team, while Dennis Coke will be the sole representative in badminton.

The 12-strong athletics team is led by Odean Skeen and includes Janieve Russell, Megan Simmonds, Sasha-Gaye Marston, Olivia James, Rochelle Farquharson, Shanice Hall, Sherika Jackson, Ashinia Miller, Fredrick Dacres, Stefan Fennell and Lennox Williams. The team members are split evenly between track and field event competitors.

Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) president Mike Fennell said the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the other international federations involved used a complicated set of criteria upon which to select athletes in the various disciplines, adding that Jamaica was able to send a badminton player because another country had pulled out of the event.

The Youth Olympics will feature athletes between age 14 and 18 competing in 26 sporting disciplines. The Games will also place focus on a culture and education programme in which all the competing athletes must participate.

Fennell, who was speaking at a press briefing at the JOA’s Cunningham Avenue headquarters yesterday, also commended Wolmer’s athlete Julian Forte who had been initially named in the team, but later pulled himself out after failing to recover sufficiently from an injury he picked up at the National Junior Trials in June.

“He had the courage to say he would not be fit enough to do his best,” Fennell said.

Forte’s coach David Riley told the Observer that the athlete suffers from the medical condition called sciatica which, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, “is characterised by radiating pain in an area of the leg typically served by one nerve root in the lumbar or sacral spine; it is sometimes also associated with sensory and motor deficits”.

Triple Olympic and World Championships gold medallist Usain Bolt, American swimmer Michael Phelps, and Russian pole vault world record-holder Yelena Isinbaeva are among the ambassadors for the YOG.

Chef de mission Denise Forrest leaves today to make preparations for the team, while the remainder of the contingent, including team managers Grace Jackson, Audley Astwood, Greg Wriede and coach Riley, leaves on Sunday. They return on August 29.