TOKYO, Japan — Jamaica finished with nine medals at the Tokyo Olympics, which saw the end of track and field Saturday morning (Jamaican time), tied fourth best with the nine medals won in 2000 in Sydney, Australia.

Jamaica won 12 medals at the London Olympics in 2012, their best haul ever and had 11 each in Beijing, China in 2008 and in Rio in 2016, the three times they claimed double-digit haul in medals.

It would have been 12 in Beijing as well, but the men’s 4x100m relay team were stripped of their medal after Nesta Carter was later charged with a doping violation.

In total Jamaican athletes have won 87 Olympic medals from all 16 Olympics Games in the modern era, starting in 1948, all but one of them in track and field with David Weller’s cycling bronze medal at the 1980 games in Moscow, the only non-track and field medal.

In Tokyo, new sprint queen Elaine Thompson-Herah led the way with three gold medals, retaining her sprint double from Rio five years ago, then partnered Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson and Briana Williams for gold in the women’s 4x100m in a new national record 41.02 seconds.

Hansle Parchment won the men’s 110m hurdles gold, upsetting red-hot favourite Grant Holloway of the USA in the final, for the other gold medal.

Fraser-Pryce won the lone silver in the women’s 100m, while Jackson took home three medals- gold in the sprint relays- and two bronze- in the 100m and the 4x400m relays.

Sprint hurdlers Ronald Levy and Megan Tapper were responsible for the other two bronze medals.

Paul A Reid