BUDAPEST, Hungary — Adelle Tracey will be hoping to get past tomorrow’s semi-finals of the women’s 1500m and surpass her best result at the World Athletics Championships, after booking her place in the second round with a fifth-place finish in her first-round heat on Saturday’s opening round at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest, Hungary.

With the new system of qualification based on position and not time, her 4:03.67 minute-clocking which was good enough for 20th overall, was acceptable.

“It was great, happy to have ticked a box and get that qualifying spot for the next round,” she said afterwards. “Just a case of resting up, recovering and be ready to go again.”

At the end of the penultimate lap, Tracey drifted and appeared to dig in and surge to join the lead pack of three runners, saying the middle-distance races can be a bit of tangle sometimes.

“It’s middle-distance running, everybody’s trying to run the same space, so yeah, a little bit of hustling, it’s always that way and at least I did not come up with any scratches this time. So yeah, happy to kind of go through smoothly and qualify.”

Meanwhile, Jamaica failed to make it to the final of the mixed relays for the first time as the team of Demish Gaye, Natoya Goule, Malik James King, and Stacey Ann Williams finished fifth in their semi-finals and ninth overall after running 3:14.05 minutes, just behind Ireland’s 3:13.90 which was the slowest qualifying.

Jamaica had won the silver medal in 2019 in Doha when the event was first held and were finalists last year in Eugene, Oregon.

The Jamaican team had lodged a protest after a Polish runner had appeared to impede Goule at the switchover, where the athletes are allowed to move out of their originally assigned lanes and get to lane one, but the protest was denied as the jury said there was not enough contact to merit an appeal.