Less than a week before the start of the track and field events at the Olympic Games in Paris, Jamaica’s head coach Maurice Wilson is in a buoyant mood and says the atmosphere around the present camp feels similar to that of the 2008 Games in Beijing.

“Five days before the start of the track and field competition at the Paris 2024 games, the Jamaican team is looking in good stead,” Wilson said in a report posted to Instagram on Saturday.

Wilson said the make-up of the team, which includes at least two athletes with junior eligibility among 36 first-time Olympians, was a good blend of veterans and youngsters.

“I can recall in 2008 (Beijing, China) when Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce made her first team (in an individual event) at the highest level and most of the team at that time were transitioning juniors taking over from the veterans, was the year where we saw some excellent performances from our sprinters and I’m getting the same feeling this year that the Jamaican team is going to do extremely well,” he said.

He reported that, “So far, the training has been very good, the athletes are settling in and what is phenomenal about our athletes is that a lot of our athletes would have done extremely well at the junior level and so they have that tenacity, they have that courage, they have that motivation,” he said, pointing out as well that they were familiar with a lot of their opponents who they would have faced in the junior competitions.

“So we’re expecting great competition, we’re expecting excellent performances from our Jamaican athletes, and we’re just holding our breath, trying to maintain the fitness that we would have developed over the long phase of training and just getting ready for competition that begins on the second of August,” Wilson said.

-Paul A Reid