JAMAICA has built a global sporting identity around speed, but Director of Tourism Donovan White believes the inaugural Jamaica Ultimate Athlete Challenge (JUAC) can show the world another side of the country’s athletic character — endurance, strength and resilience.

Speaking at Thursday’s media launch of the four-day JUAC at the Sports Development Foundation’s offices, White said the event represents an opportunity to broaden Jamaica’s sporting story while creating another avenue for the country to benefit from the rapidly expanding global sports-tourism industry.

“For generations, the world has measured Jamaica in fractions of a second. We have given the world 9.58 seconds. We have given the world relay golds, world titles and a sprinting tradition that began in our yards and on our roads,” said White.

But, he added, the JUAC will ask the world to measure Jamaica differently.

“It asks the world to measure us in endurance, in strength and in resilience: the will to go the distance when the body is ready to stop,” he added.

The inaugural event, scheduled for November, will challenge athletes across eight disciplines, bringing local and overseas competitors together for what organisers hope will become a major fixture on Jamaica’s sporting and tourism calendars.

Names like former West Indies player Tino Best of Barbados and local high school football star Morris Cyrus of STATHS fame. Other confirmed competitors are Savanna Salinas (USA), Kerrie-Kim Kirton (Trinidad and Tobago), Nicole Mericle (USA), Rose Wetzel (USA), Rose Vanhorne (Jamaica), Kevin Thompson (USA), James Matthew Ferguson (United Kingdom), Lisa Miller (United Kingdom) and Daniel Wallace (United Kingdom).

White said Jamaica was ideally positioned to capitalise on sports tourism because the country already possesses a sporting reputation that other destinations have had to spend years developing.

“Our athletes have done decades of marketing that no campaign could buy. When someone in Tokyo, Toronto or London hears the word Jamaica, they think of speed, of excellence and of joy.”

However, White stressed that Jamaica’s sporting reputation must be converted into tangible tourism benefits. “A sporting reputation alone does not fill a hotel room,” he said.

“What turns a competitor into a visitor, and a visitor into an ambassador, is everything that surrounds the event. That is where Jamaica has no equal,” he pointed out.

He also highlighted the potential for events such as JUAC to spread tourism beyond traditional resort areas and into communities across the island.

White said the event’s connection to Tru-Juice Farms in St Catherine was an example of how sports tourism could bring visitors into communities they might otherwise never experience.

“It widens the Jamaican story beyond sun, sea and sand,” he said, adding that the benefits could reach farmers, transport operators, craft vendors, entertainers and other tourism stakeholders.

White also pointed to the economic significance of the tourism sector, noting that Jamaica welcomed approximately 2.34 million visitors between January and August this year, generating about US$2.5 billion in earnings.

He said Jamaica achieved those figures while operating at roughly 80 per cent of its room capacity, which, in his view, demonstrated the continued strength of demand for the destination.

Against that backdrop, White said sporting events such as JUAC could provide new reasons for visitors to travel to Jamaica.

The Jamaica Tourist Board’s support for the event, he said, reflects its potential to deliver the kind of experience increasingly sought by travellers — “active, authentic and unmistakably Jamaican.”

With the event also being produced for television, White believes JUAC will provide Jamaica with an additional platform to showcase itself to an international audience and when the athletes arrive in November, he said, Jamaica will once again be under the microscope — but this time, not simply against a stopwatch.

“In November, the world will measure Jamaica again. It will not measure us by the clock alone. It will measure us by the walls climbed, the distance covered and the welcome we gave to everyone who came to compete,” said White.

“I have every confidence that we will measure up. We look forward to a great execution and to the first of many,” said White.

– Howard Walker