Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson (left) and Shipping Association of Jamaica CEO Trevor Riley leaf through a copy of 4Runners, a new book celebrating the lives of Jamaica’s fastest female Olympians of the 1940s through to the 1990s.

Riley had presented Patterson with a copy of the book on behalf of its author, Jamaican journalist Desmond Palmer, last Thursday at Patterson’s home in St Andrew.

Patterson wrote the book’s foreword, noting that finally four of Jamaica’s stalwarts of track and field — Cynthia Thompson, Una Morris-Chong, Marilyn Neufville, and Rosie Allwood-Morrison — are getting the treatment they deserve in the appropriately titled book. He also said the book is a “fitting tribute to the many extraordinary female athletes who have brought glory to our small island nation and whose intriguing stories should never be allowed to fade from popular memory”.

Palmer, who was a sub-editor at The Gleaner for years and is now living in the United States, is regarded as an authority on track and field athletics. 4Runners is his first book.