THE Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) has been urged to give what would essentially be wild cards to members of the Jamaican teams that qualified in four relays for the Olympic Games later this year in Paris, France.

At least two individuals with close relationships to the sport of track and field in Jamaica have suggested that members of the relay teams that earned qualification in the men’s and women’s 4x100m, women’s 4x400m, and the Mixed 4x400m relay teams at last weekend’s World Athletics Relays at Thomas A Robinson stadium in Nassau, The Bahamas, be included in the team to Paris.

Noted Coach David Riley has however poured cold water over the suggestions, telling the Jamaica Observer on Thursday that “team selection is dynamic” and given none of the athletes who were in the Bahamas were guaranteed to make the team to Paris, a situation that has long being the standard in the sport.

One of the individuals who asked not to be named but said they were a part of the committee that amended the rules, said the rules for inclusion in the relays to major international championships speaks to “the top four in the ‘flat event’ is automatically in the relay pool” and that the selection committee has the leeway to name the other members.

A coach who also asked not to be named said with the ‘big stars’ not accepting the invitation to participate in The Bahamas, and given the effort made by those who did, they should be rewarded with a place on the team to the Olympic Games.

“For the women’s 4x100m I would take the four from the World Relays and the top three from the national championships, I think that would be fair,” the coach said.

The former administrator had suggested, “Maybe two or three from the qualifying squads at World Relays should be included in the squads for the Olympic Games.”

Riley, the head coach at Excelsior High and who has been the technical leader for several junior teams, said that situation might not be the best way to select a relay team for the biggest track and field competition on the planet.

“At no level can we guarantee that the persons who did the qualifying performance are going to represent [Jamaica] at the competition,” he said. “Selection is a dynamic thing and so, you know, each person on the team plays a part. You get us in and another set of persons might run, and that is accepted within the sport.”

He, however, suggested that there is some work to be done regarding those being considered for the relays, “I think, though, that we can get a little bit tighter in terms of the pool of persons, and get people a little more excited about playing their role.”

Riley, who was part of the coaching staff of the Wolmer’s Boys’ team that won the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ Athletics Championships in 2010, said there is a need to be more realistic about Jamaica’s medal chances at major championships, and to put more resources and effort into relays.

“We need to move away from the individualistic type of thing. And, as I said, sometimes our best chances [for medals] are actually in the relays and not in the individual events, but because we are not realistic with our goals I will speak specifically to the athlete and say, ‘Look here, your chances of medalling in any event is very slim.’ We tend to not want to do that with our athletes, I don’t know why. And there’s so many cases where they’re mumblings; we mumble all the time about which athlete has no real chance. And we’re not saying that the athlete has no chance because we don’t wish them well but, just based on the performances, we can tell, with very little expertise, that this individual, it’s very difficult for them to actually get an individual medal.”

Riley suggested that if those athletes were to join forces with others they could achieve success, and used the men’s 4x400m team at the World Championships in 2019 in Doha, Qatar, as an example.

“We had no men in the individual final but we were able to get together a men’s 4x00m relay team that got a silver medal that surprised everybody — considering the quality of the athletes that we had — but they came together and they did exceptionally well,” he said.

He said Jamaica has more resources than many are led to think.

“We have more depth than others,” he said. “We may not have as much depth as the US but we have more depth than most countries in the world and we can almost always field a relay team that, if they go out and race, we will be medal contenders — and we need to make sure we preserve that and the opportunity to earn those medals. We must do everything that’s in our power to get there because it may be easier to get a 4x400m medal than to get a 400m medal at the Olympics, that is the reality.”