LONG-SERVING president of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) Mike Fennell is now on a serious mission to help increase Jamaica’s level of participation at the Olympic Games.

Fennell highlighted his mission after he vowed not to seek re-election after his new four-year term, which started in June.

Fennell is now in his 37th year at the helm of the JOA.

After serving for 36 years, Fennell, who was asked what new could he bring to the table, said his “team will be looking at the need of sports as we see it in the future…”

Fennell further said: “Over the next four years we will have challenges and the main business of the JOA is to ensure we have good participation at all the games that will take place between now and 2016.”

Jamaica, before the Rio Olympic Games in 2016, will participate in the Commonwealth Games in Scotland 2014 and Pan Am Games in Toronto 2015.

And Fennell noted that the “JOA has a new Olympic solidarity programme being launched by the International Olympic Committee and we have an opportunity to introduce some new types of training and assistance for the development of our athletes, coaches, medical personnel”.

He added his team is prepared to play its role in the further development of the National Sports Policy.

“We will continue to play the role on the national level in terms of how effective the new National Sports Policy can be… what areas of weaknesses that the policy may have and can be strengthened and how we can work with the government to ensure that sports continue to play a major role in the development of our country,” Fennell said.

Fennell, who will have Vishu Tolan and Molly Rhone as his first and second vice-presidents, respectively, said he only decided to return as president because the national sporting associations that he represents believe he still had a contribution to make at this level.

“I got requests from several of the associations, and the strength of the requests I was getting to continue, I could not ignore… if I had ignored I would be walking away from serving those requests, the needs that people saw I could assist with,” said the 78-year-old Fennell.

According to him, the sporting leaderships, who wanted him to return, was because “they felt that the leadership that I had given to the JOA had been very commendable”.

New JOA executive — Mike Fennell (president); Tishu Tolan (first vice-president); Molly Rhone (second vice-president); Christopher Samuda (secretary); Compton Rodney (treasurer); Martin Lyn, Allan Beckford, Dr Primadan Singh and Yvonne Kong (directors).