Daina Levy will create Jamaican track and field history when she steps into the hammer throw ring on the first day of track and field at the Rio Olympics, Friday, August 12, as she will be the first-ever Jamaican – male or female – to participate in the event at this level.

The 23-year-old Canadian-born Levy made the Olympic qualifying mark of 71.00m and improved her own National Record after she won the event in the Lawrence Last Chance meet in Kansas on Saturday.

She had just two legal throws in the competition, but her other legal mark of 70.12m also broke her previous National Record of 69.01m set in May last year and was way above her season-best 68.35m set in late May, also in Lawrence, Kansas, where she is a senior at the University of Kansas.

She is the fifth Jamaican female thrower to achieve the Olympic standard so far this year joining discus throwers Kellion Knibb, Tara Sue Barnett and Shadae Lawrence and shot putter Danniel Thomas-Todd in the shot put.

Additionally, three Jamaican men – discus throwers Fedric Dacres and Jason Morgan and shot putter O’Dayne Richards – have also attained Olympic qualifying marks.

Caniggia Raynor, who improved his National Record in the men’s hammer to 68.22m in April, needs 77.00m to make the Olympic qualifying mark.

Levy, who won a silver medal in the Pan-American Junior Championships in Miramar, Florida in 2011 on her first appearance for Jamaica, was also a finalist at the NACAC Under-23 and was the Big 12 hammer throw champions this season with 66.52m.

She was also fourth in the discus throw at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships and qualified for the NCAA Division One championships where she finished behind Jamaica teammates Knibb and Lawrence.

Both of her parents are from Jamaica – her mother Karrol hails from Kingston and her father Dane, hails from Bath, St Thomas.

She has also represented Canada at the 2009 IAAF World Youth Championships in Italy where she came to the attention of Hamil Pagan, a throws coach at Kingston College and Carol Long, the Jamaican media liaison to those games and where contact was made.

Levy was left off the Canadian team to the World Junior Championships held in Canada in 2010 and her mother then made contact with the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) and with the help of Garth Gayle, the General Secretary of the JAAA and Marie Tavares, Gayle’s assistant, she made the switch to Jamaica.

In 2011, she had told the Jamaica Observer she had always wanted to wear the Jamaican colours. “I don’t consider myself Canadian in my heart (as) both my parents are from Jamaica and that is what I feel I am,” Levy said.

In Miramar, she was seen with a green, black and yellow bag that was not a part of the team issue and when asked about it, she laughed and said she had bought it when she came to Jamaica for Senior Trials that year and just decided to keep it, instead of the regular Puma knapsacks the other team members had with them.