JAMAICA’S medal quest will begin in earnest at the Pan-American Games in Toronto, Canada today, with track and field set to get underway at the CIBC Pan Am/Parapan Am Athletics Stadium in York.

Fourteen Jamaicans are set to take part today, where a total of nine finals are set to be decided. Four of those finals are set to involve Jamaicans, some of whom will be seeking to impress the JAAA selection committee for the IAAF World Championships set for Beijing, China, in late August.

There will be no shortage of star power with Colombia’s outstanding triple jump athlete Caterine Ibarguen and American Shamier Little, the world leader in the women’s 400m hurdles, set to compete.

Commonwealth Games men’s shot put champion O’Dayne Richards will lead the Jamaicans seeking medals today, as Shanieka Thomas will take part in the women’s triple jump. Daina Levy is set to participate in the women’s hammer throw, while Kimberly Laing and Monique Morgan will hope to qualify for the women’s 100m hurdles final — the last event on today’s programme.

Jamaicans will also be involved in the first rounds of the men’s and women’s 100m, men’s long jump, women’s 400m hurdles and women’s 800m run.

Richards, who will represent Jamaica along with Raymond Brown in the shot put final, should start favourite to win a medal, to add to his Commonwealth Games, two Central American and Caribbean Games and World University Games successes, as he fine-tunes for the World Championships.

With Ibarguen in the field, the odds are that everyone else will be jumping for silver, as the Colombian world champion has gone over 14.65m five times this year and has the Pan Am record of 14.92m set in 2011 in Mexico.

Thomas is one of several Jamaican athletes still to make the entry standard for the World Championships and will need to jump at least 14.20m to get into the team. She enters the championships with a best of 13.86m set this year.

Levy won a silver medal for Jamaica at the Junior Pan American Championships in Miramar, Florida, in 2011, and won her third Jamaican National Senior Championships this year with a throw of 63.03m.

Kimberly Laing and Monique Morgan will line up in the hurdles semi-finals, set to start at 5:15 pm Jamaican time, where they will seek a spot in the final set for 7:50 pm.

Based on form, American Queen Harrison will start favourite to win this event.

Sherone Simpson, who is expected to run the 100m at the World Championships, will join World Championships relay gold medallist Schillonie Calvert in the women’s 100m preliminaries that will be run at 9:30 this morning.

The qualifiers will advance to the respective semi-finals and finals set for Wednesday evening.

The Trinidad and Tobago pair of Kelly-Ann Baptiste and Simoya Hackett, as well as American Barbara Pierre, are among those who look set to battle for the medals.

Jason Livermore and Sheldon Mitchell will be in the men’s 100m preliminaries in an event that should be one of the highlights of the track and field programme.

Trinidad’s Keston Bledman comes into the championships with the fastest time of 9.86 seconds, the fourth-fastest man in the world so far this year, while Canadian Andre DeGrasse, who has run a legal 9.95 seconds and a wind-aided 9.75 seconds (2.7m/s), will get the home crowd support.

Antigua and Barbuda’s Daniel Bailey and Cayman Islands’ Kemar Hyman should also advance.

Damar Forbes will be seeking his first title in Jamaican colours when he takes part in the men’s long jump preliminaries, with the final set for tomorrow.

Samantha Elliott and Ristananna Tracey will be seeking to make progress in the women’s 400m hurdles where they will meet the likes of American champion Little, who won the World Junior Championships last year, as well as the experienced Kori Carter.

Kimarra McDonald might have her final chance to run the World Championships qualifying time in the women’s 800m with the cut-off date being August 10.

McDonald, who represented Jamaica at the Commonwealth Games last year and the IAAF World Relays in the Bahamas this year, needs to run two minutes, 01.00 second to join automatic qualifiers Natoya Goule and Simoya Campbell on the Jamaican team to Beijing.