PARIS, France — Jamaica confirmed its arrival as a discus-throwing powerhouse by showing amazing group consistency as all three representatives eased into Wednesday’s men’s final.

The trio of giant throwers, little separating them throughout the year in terms of distance, once more clustered their efforts in an incredibly close group of marks — with only 73cm differentiating them — to comfortably make the cut, with all only fractionally below the 66m automatic qualification standard.

Traves Smikle, Roje Stona, and Ralford Mullings finished fifth, sixth, and seventh, respectively, of the 12 qualifiers. And with none much more than two metres behind World and Olympic record holder Mykolas Alekna of Lithuania, who led the pack, all must harbour realistic hopes of a medal.

Smikle, taking part in his third Olympics, clearly demonstrated his joy at reaching a maiden final with a second-round throw of 65.91m.

In London 2012 and Tokyo 2020 the experienced triple World Championship finalist, now 32, couldn’t get past qualification but in the French capital it turned out to be “third time lucky”.

With his partner Sasha and cherished young child back home in Kingston, he smiled and said,

“I’m pretty sure they were watching as they are very excited, and speaking to my lady earlier this morning calmed me down.

“My first throw — the discus slipped out and I’d started by using a different discus to the one I usually use, so then I thought, ‘No, I’m going back to ‘old faithful’!’

“At my first Olympics I was very young, then at the second I’d been injury-prone all season, so I so much wanted to make the final — and it happened today!

“It’s always special [the Olympics], and to be in the final makes it very special.”

The 21-year old Mullings — youngest of the trio — opened with a 65.18m throw.

“It’s been a great year, an awesome year,” he said. “The most nerve-racking thing is making it through the trials and then qualifying, but I’ve progressed throughout the season and hopefully can find a ‘big one’ in the final.

“Funny thing with me is, when I am super nervous I try to channel all my energy into the throw and [so] it goes a lot further — so I hope there are a lot more nerves in two days.

“Everybody encourages everyone else, and the others have helped me get motivated here.

“Jamaica is definitely becoming one of the best discus-throwing nations in the world — it took 64-high to even make it on the team!”

Stona, having failed to make it through qualifying at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, duly completed the hat-trick of succes with 65.32m in Pool B, then commented, “I had no information about how the others had done. I was just concentrating on my own performance.

“It’s good for the country, and we had already seen at the trials that Jamaican is in good shape as far as discus goes… and it’s still getting stronger.

“Now we have to enjoy, relax, have fun and execute!”

This is the first time that three Jamaicans have made it to an Olympic discus final.