Jamaica’s quest for honours at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships gets underway this morning at the Estadio Atletico de la Videna in Lima, Peru, with the chance to win two medals on the opening day of the five-day event.

Jamaicans will be involved in two events that will be decided on Tuesday, the men’s shot put and mixed 4x400m relays. They are seeking to emulate or better the 16 medals won two years ago in Cali, Colombia, the highest haul by a Jamaican team at the Under-20 level.

The team, which travelled in three groups, was scheduled to arrive in the South American city on Sunday and was set to have been taken through light workout on Monday in preparation for the championships.

In addition to the men’s shot put and mixed relays, Jamaicans will also be involved in the first round and the semi-finals of the men’s and women’s 100m; the preliminaries of the men’s triple jump; women’s discus throw; women’s long jump; and the women’s 800m.

Shaiquan Dunn, who is ranked 11th in the men’s shot put (6Kg), has only lost once with the junior weight all season. He won at the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) athletics championships and Carifta Games but will face better competition in Peru.

Dunn could be hard pressed to emulate Kobe Lawrence’s silver medal in Cali in 2022 but is expected to at least get past the first round and into the final set for 5:35 pm.

The mixed 4x400m relay team is scheduled to contest the preliminaries at 9:35 am with the final set for 6:50 pm, the last event of the day.

The preliminaries of the men’s and women’s 100m will be held on the opening day, a first for any global championships, and a move away from the usual scheduling of the first round on one day, followed by the semi-finals and final on the second day.

Third-ranked Gary Card and DeAndre Daley are to represent Jamaica in the men’s 100m. Both are expected to be in the medal race on Tuesday.

Card, 17, who ran 10.07 seconds at the national championships in late June, spent some time training and competing in Europe before returning home. He is also set to run the 200m.

Daley, who has promised much over the last few years, endured a slow start to the season, failing to medal in the 100m at Western Championships. He missed out on the final at the ISSA championships and did not run at the Carifta Trials.

He told the Jamaica Observer he is in a “much better shape”.

“I’m feeling really great knowing I’ve done all the necessary work to get into this championship healthy and ready to compete,” he said. “I’m in a much better shape. It was a really rough [start to] the season but my coach and I made sure we did all we had to do to get to this point.”

He said his medal quest in Peru is not driven by the notion to prove the naysayers wrong.

“I am doing this for myself and the country and not for what other people think or what they have to say. So it’s not redemption. I’m just going out to prove to myself that I am still [the] top athlete, that I am.”

Daley, who ran a personal best 10.08 seconds last year, gives himself a great chance to medal on Tuesday.

“I’ve been working hard, so it will obviously show on the track,” he said.

And while he said he has an idea of the time he wants to run, he added that he “won’t speak about it, people have to just see it when the time comes.”

Alana Reid, the 200m silver medallist from Cali and a member of the Jamaican women’s 4x100m relay team at the Olympics in Paris, is the number one ranked in the 100m, and her compatriot Thieanna Lee Terrelonge is ranked number three. Both are expected to advance to the final.

Reid, who has a lifetime best 10.92 that she ran a year ago, has a season best and world leading 11.09, just ahead of Australia’s Torrie Lewis (11.10) and Terrelonge’s personal best of 11.13 seconds set this year.

With the withdrawal of defending champion and world junior record holder Jaydon Hibbert, Chavez Penn will fly the flag for Jamaica in the men’s triple jump in which he is ranked 13th with a best of 15.92m.

Rohanna Sudlow will compete in the women’s long jump after the withdrawal of Alliyah Foster, while Shamoyea Morris and Najhada Seymoure are down to contest the women’s discus throw. Kitania Headley is the lone Jamaican in the women’s 800m event.

Meanwhile, Herbert Morrison Technical Head Coach Claude Grant, also the personal coach of Daley, has been named the replacement for Corey Bennett on the coaching staff for the Jamaican team to Lima. The Observer has learnt that Bennett had withdrawn due to “personal reasons”.

Additionally, Jamaica’s Head of Delegation Keith Wellington confirmed the addition of massage therapists Evan Allen and Jerome Kirby.