Jamaica’s medal hunt is expected to start today at the World Under-20 Athletics Championships at Pascual Guerrero Olympic Stadium in Cali, Colombia following mixed results on Monday’s opening day of the six-day championships.

The Mixed 4x400m relay team and shot putter Kobe Lawrence will compete in finals on today’s second day after Monday’s qualification while both men’s 100m runners Sandrey Davison and Bouwahjgie Nkrumie are also through to the semi-finals set for today, after both won their first round heats.

Men’s sprint hurdlers Demario Prince and Deshaun Lamb also made safe progress and will line up in the semi-finals also set for today.

Meanwhile, Tina Clayton, the defending champion in the women’s 100m, will lead nine other athletes who will be making their first appearances today.

Clayton and Serena Cole are down for the women’s 100m; Dejanae Oakley and Rickianne Russell will contest the women’s 400m and Delano Kennedy and Shaemar Uter will line up in the men’s equivalent.

Safhia Hinds and Onieka McAnnuff are down to contest the women’s 400m hurdles with Brandon Pottinger set for the men’s high jump.

On Monday, the Mixed 4x400m relay team of Jasauna Dennis, Abigail Campbell, Malachi Johnson and Alliah Baker were second in their semi-final behind the USA who set a championship record 3:18.65 seconds.

The Jamaican time of 3:19.74 minutes is faster than the 3:23.04 set by the Jamaican team at last year’s World Under-20 in Nairobi, Kenya and also the 3:22.23 posted by an Under-18 team, also in Kenya in 2017.

Lawrence, who was eighth at last year’s staging in Nairobi threw 19.85m on his third attempt, over the automatic qualifying mark of 19.60m to secure his spot in the shot put final.

Only three athletes achieved the automatic qualifying mark and Lawrence was second after the qualifying round behind Germany’s Tizian Noah Lauria’s 20.15m with the USA Tarik O’Hagan third with a personal best 19.65m.

The second Jamaican, Christopher Lawrence, failed to advance as his only legal mark of 18.13m on his first attempt saw him finish outside the top 12 throwers.

In the men’s 100m first round, which was contested in the morning session, Davison, the two-time national junior champion, ran 10.25 seconds (1.7m/s) to win his heat easily while Nkrumie ran 10.39 seconds (-2.9m/s), as defending champion and World Junior record holder Letsile Tebogo set a Championships record 10.00 seconds (-0.6m/s) to lead all qualifiers.

Tebogo, who will contest the double at the World Under-20, had run 9.94 seconds in the semi-finals at the World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, two weeks ago.

In the 110m hurdles, Prince ran 13.80 seconds (0.2m/s) to win his heat while Lamb was third in his heat in 13.69 seconds (0.5m/s), the same time as Bogdan Vidojkovic who ran a Serbian national junior record.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing as both female discus throwers — Cedricka Williams, who was a finalist in Nairobi last year, and Abigail Martin — failed to get past the first round after disappointing performances.

Williams, who is ranked joint second in the world with a personal best 56.21m, had a best throw of 46.20m in her preliminary round Monday while Martin could only manage 38.89m, second to last in the competition.

Shot putter Britannie Johnson came up agonisingly short of advancing to the final, finishing 13th overall after throwing 14.44m in the final round and just missed advancing by 19 centimetres.

Rushana Dwyer failed to get past the first round of the women’s 800m after she ran 2:14.23 seconds for seventh in her heat and failed to advance.