THE Technical Committee of Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) is expected to meet today to ratify a proposal for the staging of a men’s 4x400m relay at the National Championships set to be held at the national stadium this week. This is in a last-ditch attempt to qualify for the Olympic Games.

Jamaica, the 17th-ranked men’s 4x400m team, has failed on three previous attempts to qualify for the event at the Paris Olympic Games and has one final try given the event is scheduled for June 30th, hours before the qualification window closes.

The Sunday Observer understands that an option to run the first two rounds of the men’s 400m on Thursday’s opening day, with the final set for Friday — giving the athletes a chance to get sufficient rest and recovery for Sunday’s first-ever attempt to qualify a relay team at the national trials — was adopted at a second virtual meeting of stakeholders.

For “Option B” (as it was called) to be used, however, it would require adjustments to the schedule, with the men’s 400m — which had originally been set to run Friday, Saturday and Sunday— now being scheduled for two rounds on Thursday and the final on Friday, with the top 16-ranked athletes getting a bye to the semis.

To qualify for the Olympics a Jamaican men’s team will need to run faster than 2:59.12 minutes in order to be one of 16 teams that will compete in Paris.

Jamaica is in the 17th spot with a time of 2:59.34 seconds that a team ran for fourth place at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last year, while Zambia holds the 16th and last place, and France are in 15th place with 2:58.45 minutes.

This would be Jamaica’s fourth attempt to qualify for the Olympics after failing twice at the first qualification attempt — the World Athletics Relays in The Bahamas and also at the NACAC New Life Invitational that was also held in The Bahamas on Sunday.