It was not quite the load off his shoulders but Commonwealth Games champion and World Championships silver medallist Fedrick Dacres is happy that he got the qualifying mark for the World Athletics Championships out of the way and can now focus on improving his techniques in the discus throw.

After several years of setbacks, including at least two serious injuries, Dacres threw 68.57m to win the event at the Tucson Elite Throws event held at Roy P Drachman stadium at the University of Arizona on Thursday.

His winning mark was well over the qualifying distance of 67.00m for the World Championships that will be held in Budapest, Hungary in August and was his best throw since 2020 when he had a season’s best 69.67m at a meet held at Excelsior High and saw him move up five places to sixth on the World Athletics performance charts.

Dacres, who had another competition in Tucson on Saturday, had two other throws over the qualifying distance — 68.27m and 67.84m as he joined training partner Traves Smikle and Roje Stona as the Jamaican men with the qualifying mark.

“I feel good about getting the qualifier,” he told the Jamaica Observer late Friday evening. “Honestly, I did not go into the event thinking about the qualifiers, I knew that I had to get it, I really went for the competition as they had [Alex Rose], who threw 70m plus, you had Sam Mattis and both of them were ahead of me last year, so I went in to compete against them.”

What the result showed him was, “I am in good shape and my hand is not as bad as before [as] it’s not twitching as much, so I can actually feel the discus and pull so that is good for me.”

Julian Robinson, who has conditioned Dacres since he was at Calabar High, was also happy with the result but was not surprised. “In preparing for the Budapest World Championships, he needed to attain the World Championship qualification standard, [so] the performance doesn’t surprise me, he has been training well.”

Robinson recounted the struggles the 29 year-old has been through over the last few years since he won the silver medal at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.

“The last three years have been challenging for Dacres. After winning a silver medal at the 2019 World Championship, his fortunes have declined,” Robinson said. “The decline started in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, then back-to-back injury-plagued years in 2021 and 2022.”

However, things have turned around for the better

“Thus far, 2023 has been good. We are trying to turn around the decline. He has trained well. He has some high-level track meetings lined up for the next several weeks and I am hopeful,” Robinson ended.