KINGSTON, Jamaica – Having participated in fewer tournaments after switching from online to face-to-face classes since the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, defending All Jamaica Badminton Open champion Tahlia Richardson says she remains focused on qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Richardson, who is in her final semester of pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Human Resource Management at the University of the West Indies, Mona, said online classes allowed her the freedom to compete more. But there are several upcoming games that could help to propel her in the right direction this season.

“I mean with school going face-to-face, it really takes away some time because when it was online, I could’ve gone to tournaments and still have the recordings of my classes, like an exam, I could’ve done it online. But now, I kind of have to cut back the tournaments because I have face-to-face school,” Richardson told the OBSERVER ONLINE.

“But there are a lot of games coming up this year that I think will be able to better equip me and kind of push me into the direction I want to go,” she added.

Richardson, a two-time All Jamaica Badminton Open champion, was one of the nation’s flag-bearers for the first-ever Junior Pan-American Games in 2021. She was selected as one of four athletes for the first-ever Jamaica Olympic Association Scholarship in 2020, and represented Jamaica at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last year.

In badminton, countries are allowed to enter no more than two athletes to participate at the Olympic Games. However, only those ranked in the top 250 in the world, having gained points from competitions, can be selected. Richardson is currently ranked 387th, according to the Badminton World Federation.

Against this background, Richardson, who was based in Mandeville and is now in Kingston, expressed that despite competing in fewer tournaments, her training regime has improved significantly, especially regarding her conditioning, on court workouts and overall physicality.

“I have set days for running and then I have set days for court time. The structure [training] I’m currently using now, I think it is a good structure. It’s very uniformed. I mean training in Mandeville was good, but I don’t think I was putting in enough gym time and enough running to help my physicality. But I’ve been focusing more on that, not just the technical aspects and the on court time. So, I’ve been doing more of that,” said Richardson.

She said she will compete at the XXI Torneo Internacional de Badminton Giraldilla de la Habana in Cuba this month in addition to the Pan American Championships to be held in Jamaica in April and the 2023 Central American and Caribbean Games among others in hopes of improving her ranking.

Nigella Saunders is the only badminton player to represent Jamaica at the Olympic Games, having qualified for the 2004 edition of the Games in Athens, Greece.