Led by the decorated trio of Tajay Gayle, Shanieka Ricketts and Kimberly Williams, Jamaica is world-class in the long and triple jumps and their feats are inspiring youngsters to follow in their footsteps. The high jump has proven to be more stubborn. Jeremy DeLisser jumps coach at Kingston College and Edwin Allen High School, has seen the anomaly and has a solution – make high jump practice more fun.

No Jamaican, male or female, has made a World or Olympic high jump final since 2003 when Germaine Mason placed 5th at the World Championships. To show it was no fluke, the Stephen Francis coached MVP athlete fought off an ankle injury to secure the bronze at the World Indoor Championships the following year.

The pickings have been slim since then, leading DeLisser to recommend a change in the way high jumpers are made to approach training. “If we can find a way to approach it more from maybe a fun aspect, where it is seen as fun”, recommended the coach of World Under 20 horizontal jump medal winners Wayne Pinnock and Jaydon Hibbert, “we’re having better facilities in more schools where you can have kids just playing around, which in itself would help to identify talent in the event.”

That might draw more athletes to the event. “What I find is that out of all the jumps locally, the high jump is an event that is shied away from the most by the youngsters. You tend to find that, for me, you have to convince, not just encourage, but convince, more convincing to get them to try the event because there’s some amount of fear factor that’s there and in fact, it’s not seen as a glamour event as well”, he explained.

He added that the long and triple jumps are seen as cousins to the flat sprints. “Everybody wants to sprint. The horizontals, the hurdles are seen as more of a sprint event than the high jump, so you tend to find that it takes a lot of convincing”, Delisser explained.

Fear of heights is evident to DeLisser, especially with female jumpers. “You can see when the bar gets to a particular height, the eyes get a little bit wider but the potential is definitely there”, he stipulated.

Most of that recent potential has been shown by Jamaicans who have attended Kansas State University. Kimberly Williamson, now 28, and Christoff Bryan, 25, won NCAA outdoor titles in 2016 and 2017 respectively and Williamson secured a bronze medal at the 2019 Pan-American Games. Earlier this year, Lamara Distin, who is still at Kansas State, placed second at the NCAA Outdoors and cleared 1.90 metres, the highest by a Jamaican woman since Williamson flew over 1.91 four years ago.

Distin, a 2018 World Under 20 finalist, is 21.

Mason and Williamson are the only Jamaicans to have ever contested the event at the World Championships.