London , England — Jamaica’s three-time Olympic quarter-miler Davian Clarke, who is now the technical leader of the Philippines, believes Jamaica can win both mile relays at the London World Championships.

Clarke, the former Kingston College star who won a 4x400m relay bronze at the 1996 Olympics, and is known as one of Jamaica’s best mile-relay runners, is more than pleased to see the progress the nation has made in the 400m, culminating with two runners in the final of the Men’s 400m yesterday.

“That was an incredible thing to occur. I knew we could always do it but to actually see it happen again — I don’t know when was the last time we had two people in the final, I know in the Olympics in 2000 and 2004, we had multiple competitors in the final,” Clarke explained to the Jamaica Observer.

“So it is good to see the quarter-milers coming to the front, especially with the retirement of Usain Bolt. I personally think that’s where Jamaica’s focus should be — building up our quarter-milers, not just the guys, but the girls, and I think we have a good shot at winning this World Championships men’s and women’s 4×4,” said Clarke.

“I think we have a good group, and if we prepare them I think they can do some damage in the next two Olympics,” pointed out.

Clarke, who has a personal best of 44.83secs for the 400m while placing sixth at the 2004 Olympic Games, is building the Philippines athletics programme, although at the London World Championships their focus is on the regional championships.

“Everything is good. We have a small team here; their thing is to try to get more qualifiers. They actually have more persons that qualified but they have a big championship coming up, the South East Asian Games. For Eric (Clay), this would be a tune-up meet but for the other athletes they wanted them to prepare significantly for that,” he pointed out.

“Eric is going to that meet in two weeks so that’s the plan. That’s kind of more the focus in attacking the Asian championship and the regional Asian meets,” he explained.

“We have athletes for 2020, but we thinking beyond to 2024 and trying to get the grass roots programme going in the Philippines,” said Clarke.

The 41-year-old, who graduated in 1998 from the University of Miami with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and organisation, still has a desire to coach in Jamaica. He is also coaching at the University of Texas in El Paso.

Clarke is a USATF Level One certified coach and a member of the IAAF Athletes Commission.

“I am still in the US, I am trying to build the programme. We win the women’s conference title three years in a row and eight conference titles since I have been there,” said Clarke.

“In the five years that I have been there we have had about six individual NCAA champions. We trying to get past winning individually and trying to see if we can build more of a team. We are trying to recruit good student athletes, so the plan is really focused on building up the college team,” he reiterated.

— Howard Walker