WESTERN Jamaica will have added interest when the women’s shot put event gets underway today (Jamaica time) at the Tokyo Olympics with former Frome Technical athlete Danniel Thomas-Dodd and Lloydricia Cameron representing Jamaica.

Thomas-Dodd, who won her sixth national senior championships at the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) in late June, and the American-born Cameron, whose mother Virginia Walcott ran track for Mt Alvernia High School and MoBay Comets, will be seeking spots in the final set for Sunday.

It will be Thomas-Dodd’s second Olympics after she placed 14th five years ago in Brazil, while it will be the first major championships for Cameron who qualified for the Games based on her world rankings after failing to get the qualifying mark of 18.50 metres in the qualifying window.

Despite being outside of the top 10 in the world for the first time in years, Thomas-Dodd has developed into one of the elite female shot putters in the world, winning the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and the Pan-American Games title a year later where she set her national record 19.55m.

Additionally, the former Kent State University NCAA champions won back-to-back silver medals at the World Indoors in Birmingham in 2018 and the World Championships in Doha, Qatar in 2019.

Cameron, who represented the United States as a junior, threw a personal best 18.33 metres this year, the second-best ever by a Jamaican woman at the senior level, and is a long shot to make it past the first round.