THE anticipation that had been building since it was first announced that Jamaica would be hosting the 49th Carifta Games, the region’s premier junior track and field championships will culminate today when the three-day showpiece gets underway at the National Stadium at 9:00 am.

Twenty-six of the 28 member nations will be represented by 460 athletes, as Jamaica will host the event for the eighth occasion overall, and the first time since it was held in 2011 at the Montego Bay Sports Complex in St James.

After an absence of two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, athletes and organisers will be eager to get going.

“You never know what you had until you lose it,” said Michael Fennell, the chairman of the Local Organising Committee.

Jamaica, who have topped the medals table every year from 1985 — a year after they lost to The Bahamas by one medal — to 2019, are expected to dominate the competition.

Jamaica, who copped 85 medals (36 gold, 33 silver and 16 bronze) in the Cayman Islands in 2019 when the championships was last held, will field a full strength 80-member team. They will be seeking their 36th-straight Carifta track and field title and 44th overall, and are expected to once again dominate the championships, especially in front of what is expected to be a full house.

Twenty gold medals will be decided on Saturday’s first day of the competition, including the 100m in all four age groups (Under-17 and Under-20 for boys and girls).

The 400m and 1,500m, as well as several field events, will also be decided, while the multi-events, the heptathlon for the girls and octathlon for the boys will also start.

The 2020 and 2021 stagings, which were to be held in Bermuda, were both cancelled because pandemic. Guyana had been next in line to host this year but withdrew, leaving Jamaica, at late notice, picked up the slack.

While he said the championships was ready to go on, Fennell told the Jamaica Observer on Thursday evening they were having some issues with accommodation.

“Some standards were not up to what we hoped, but we are working on them and we expect that everything will be worked out.”

Teams had started arriving from as early as Wednesday and on Thursday, a large contingent from The Bahamas, including athletes, officials and family members arrived on a chartered flight. It was said that the delegations from Trinidad and Tobago and Cayman Islands had also arrived.

Fennell said that the recent staging of the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Championships will boost the competition this weekend.

“There will be a higher expectation after what we saw last week,” he said. “Champs was a very high standard of competition and that could spill over this weekend.”

Corey Bennett, the head coach of the Jamaican team, said while he was still getting to know most of the 80 athletes, they were ready to reassert their dominance on the region.

He expects the Jamaicans, led by the powerful Under-20 contingent, to blow away the competition and not even the throng of overseas-based athletes who competed at last week’s ISSA Champs, he said, would be able to prevent this.

“They will help their own teams,” Bennett said. “For sure, their being trained here and doing well at Champs will be a benefit to them but that wont hurt our medal haul.”

The likes of Grenadians Jamora Alves, who attends St Jago High, St Catherine High’s Jamora Patterson, Ahshareah Enoe of Edwin Allen, Kingston College’s Khailan Vitalis; and St Catherine’s Natalie Albert of St Lucia; and Trinidad and Tobago’s Natasha Fox, who ran for Edwin Allen, Lebron James of Jamaica College; and Handel Roban of Jamaica College, who hails from St Vincent, are expected to line up under their national flags over the next three days.

Up to press time yesterday, the final starting list of athletes in the events had not been published but it is expected that the Clayton twins will run the Under-20 girls’ 100m for Jamaica, while Carifta Trials boys Under-20 winner DeAndre Daley and Boys’ Champs Class One winner Bryan Levell would line up for Jamaica.

Theianna-Lee Terrelonge and Camoy Binger should fly the Jamaican flag in the Under-17 girls’ and Gary Card and either Shaquane Gordon or Rickoy Hunter could line up in the Under-17 boys’ race.

The first round of the 100m will start at 9:40 am, with the semi-final set to start at 5:00 pm. The finals are scheduled for two hours and 45 minutes later.