KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s Traves Smikle and Lamara Distin have achieved the Olympic Games qualifying standards in their individual events, the men’s discus throw and women’s high jump, respectively.

Both achieved the feat during competitions on Saturday.

Smikle won the men’s discus throw with a world leading 67.57m mark at the King of the Rings event held at Excelsior High, almost a year to the date when he achieved the qualifying mark for the World Championships last year. The Commonwealth Games medallist had two throws over the 67.00m mark and also passed the Olympic Games qualifying standard of 67.20m.

Distin, who represented Jamaica at the last two World Athletics Championships and was fifth in Budapest, Hungary last year, had a season best 1.97m to win the women’s invitational at the Clemson Tiger Paw Invitational on Saturday, the exact qualifying mark for the Olympics.

The Texas A&M University senior broke the meeting record of 1.91m set in 2019 by St Lucian Lavern Spencer and is third in the world behind World Champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh of the Ukraine (2.04m) and Nicola Olyslagers of Australia (2.03m).

-Paul A Reid