Early challenges faced by the Jamaican contingent when they arrived in the Bahamas week, have not prevented the 39-member team from racking up medals at the 2022 NACAC Open Championships.
At the end of Saturday’s penultimate day of competition, Jamaica is second in the medal standings with 12 inclusive of three gold, three silver and six bronze medals. Only the United States with 39 medals have won more.
On Saturday, Shericka Jackson, Ackeem Blake and Christopher Taylor won gold medals but the competition was the furthest from the athletes’ minds when they first arrived in The Bahamas on August 17.
On arrival, the Jamaicans were housed at the Grand Lucayan Resort where athletes from 29 other countries were also housed. However, according to Assistant Team Manager Steve McGregor, the conditions proved to be challenging for the Jamaican team.
Information obtained by Sportsmax.TV indicated that the team experienced ‘some hiccups’ when they first arrived.
“The hotel they had us booked to stay in was just not fully ready for occupancy at the time,” said McGregor. “Our athletes were just not comfortable. I visited some of the rooms myself and saw that the air conditioning units, keys to the doors and challenges to access Wi-Fi, were some of the problems. The initial challenges did not affect our athletes in any significant way.”
However, for the benefit of the athletes, a decision was made to relocate the team to another hotel.
“The management team decided that we wanted better for our athletes and we wanted them to settle in as quickly as possible to get focused on what we were here for. We were relocated to another hotel, which was much better.”
McGregor surmised that COVID-19 and the hurricane in 2019 that hit that side of the island prevented the hotel from being used at its capacity until now, hence the challenges.
He praised local officials for acting quickly to ensure that the athletes could settle quickly.
“I must say that they were very efficient. The ambassador and top officials from the tourism ministry stepped in. We were visited by the minister at our hotel,” he explained.
“We are good now. The athletes are well motivated and doing well on the track and in the field, we are poised to do even better today (Sunday) on the closing day. We should amass over 20 medals. Some athletes are doing their personal best and winning.”
Guadeloupe is third in the standings with three medals while Canada lie fourth with one gold among their 11 medals. Hosts The Bahamas are fifth with one gold and two bronze medals heading into Sunday’s final day.