Thanks to Fedrick Dacres, Ronald Levy, Janieve Russell, Aisha Praught-Leer, Danniel Thomas-Dodd, Kimberly Williams and the women’s 4×400 team, Russell, Jamaica won 7 gold medals at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in Australia. With the athletics programme of the 2022 Games set to begin today (August 2) in Birmingham, England, the best hope of a title defence might well come in the triple jump. A Jamaican win would bring the gold medal home for the fifth straight time.

2005 World Champion Trecia Smith won the event in 2006 and 2010, with Williams continuing the streak in 2014 and 2018. Jamaica’s top exponent now is Shanieka Ricketts, the 2019 and 2022 World Championships runner-up. The lanky Jamaican is more than 40 centimetres better than Dominica’s Olympic finalist Thea Lafond on the 2022 Commonwealth performance list, 14.89 metres to 14.56, but Lafond will remember she beat Ricketts in June at the Rabat Diamond League meeting.

She was fifth at the recent World Championships in Eugene, Oregon ahead of 7th placed Williams who has struggled a little since she won the World Indoor bronze medal in March.

With discus ace, Dacres fighting back from a midseason groin strain, and 110m hurdler Levy and steeplechaser Praught-Leer absent, Russell will seek to redeem her season after an early exit in the Eugene 400m hurdles. In Birmingham, she will hope to win her third consecutive medal in the event known as the ‘mankiller’ and to extend a streak started in 2014 by Kaliese Spencer.

A Jamaican sweep isn’t out of the question as Russell, Eugene finalist Rushell Clayton and two-time semifinalist Shiann Salmon are the fastest women in Birmingham at 53.63 seconds for both Russell and Clayton and 53.82 for Salmon.

Thomas-Dodd will have her hands full. Canadian Sarah Mitton finished ahead of her at the World Championships and the margin on season’s best – 20.33 metres to 19.53 for the Jamaican – is sizeable.

Dacres and Traves Smikle, who were first and second in 2018, are third and fourth on the Commonwealth Games performance list but both are stout-hearted throwers and could find their way back to the podium.

With World top 8 finisher Candice McLeod on duty, medals are possible in the women’s 400m and 4x400m titles.

Elaine Thompson-Herah was in the middle of her ongoing Achilles tendon misery when she placed fourth in the 200 in 2018. If the double-double Olympic champion has rested from Eugene, she will be a threat in the sprints where her 2022 100m best of 10.79 seconds is the fastest of all entrants.

Jamaica garnered 7 gold, 8 silver and 10 bronze medals, its largest ever Commonwealth Games medal haul.