TAMPERE, Finland — Kai Chang’s surprise gold medal in the men’s discus throw set a record for gold medals won by Jamaica at the IAAF World Under 20 Championships on today’s final day of the championships on another day where the Tampere stadium was bathed in brilliant sunshine.

​His personal best 62.36m was Jamaica’s fourth gold medal of the championships, beating the three that was set twice, as Jamaica went on to win a record 12 medals, also beating the previous best of 11 set in Kingston in 2002.

​Jamaica won three medals on the final day including a close silver by Britany Anderson in the 100m hurdles that took a 10th of a thousand of a second to separate from the winner and a bronze in the women’s 4x400m relay, thanks to a brilliant third leg from Shiann Salmon, the silver medallist in the 400m hurdles earlier.

​Jamaica was the only English speaking country to earn a medal and finished second on the tables with four gold medals, five silver and three bronze, behind leaders Kenya who won six gold, four silver and one bronze and the United States, who won two gold medals today to end in third with three gold, eight silver and seven bronze for 18 medals, the most by any team.

​Chang became only the second Jamaican to win an IAAF World Under 20 gold medal in the discus throw, joining his training partner Fedric Dacres who won in 2012 in Barcelona, Spain after winning the World Under 18 title a years earlier in France.

​His winning throw came on the second throw in the first round and despite finishing with three foul throws as he said he was trying to go longer, was able to beat Yauheni Bahutski of Belarus- 61.75m and Chile’s Claudio Romero who threw a season’s best 60.81m.

​Meanwhile, after being left in the blocks at the start, Anderson stormed back to run a persona best 13.01seconds (-0.1m/s), the same time given to American Tia Jones with another American Cortney Jones in third with 13.19 seconds.

​The official results showed Tia and Anderson tied on the first tie breaker, milli-seconds at .002 and while an appeal was immediately lodged by the Jamaican officials, the result stood.

​There was one change to the women’s mile relay team with Salmon replacing Chrisanni May and it paid off big as she produced a brilliant effort as the team clocked a season’s best 3:31.90 seconds.

​Janielle Josephs led off and handed over the baton in fourth place to 400m finalist Stacey-Ann Williams who closed the gap half way through the lap but then faded at the end leaving Salmon with a big gap but she put in a herculean effort, chased and caught the Americans who led.

​Calisha Taylor juts managed to stay in the frame as she was passed by the Australian runner and just edged Canada.

Paul Reid